


Method in their madness

by comeaftermejackrobinson



Series: Definition of madness [1]
Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: Angst and Romance, F/M, First Time, Post-Season/Series 03, Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-17
Updated: 2017-04-21
Packaged: 2018-08-23 00:58:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 30
Words: 67,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8307700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/comeaftermejackrobinson/pseuds/comeaftermejackrobinson
Summary: He knew, had known for quite some time now, that she’d be the death of him. Whether delirious with abstinence or choked on the poetry he’d never read to her, like Antony in the arms of Cleopatra he would meet his downfall wishing he had time to place the last of their many thousands of kisses on her lips.





	1. Chapter 1

**CLEOPATRA.** If it be love indeed, tell me how much.

 

 **ANTONY.** There’s beggary in the love that can be reckoned.

 

 **CLEOPATRA.** I’ll set a bourn how far to be beloved.

 

 **ANTONY.** Then must thou needs find out new heaven, new earth.

 

 _Antony and Cleopatra_ (1.1.19-26)

 

 

 

His lips longed for hers. His arms were hungered for her embrace. The taste of her tongue, however briefly it had danced against his, tainted his mouth. Sleep eluded him whereas thoughts of her chased after him; they had ever since he’d seen her for the first time, kneeling on a bathroom floor looking up at him beautiful and defiant.

 

He knew, had known for quite some time now, that she’d be the death of him. Whether delirious with abstinence or choked on the poetry he’d never read to her, like Antony in the arms of Cleopatra he would meet his downfall wishing he had time to place the last of their many thousands of kisses on her lips.

 

Her lips! How they had both hurt and soothe, torture and comfort in the moments before the airplane took off. The sun had not risen again since she had left for London and he already missed her desperately. Her presence in his life had filled him with an inexplicable sense of belonging he could only compare to coming home in time for tea and finding a warm cup already waiting for him beside his favorite play by Shakespeare, all things that had never happened to him. He lived alone, and even when he had been married Rosie had never cared nor wanted to learn about things he was passionate about, like music or literature, and he had never been home from work in time for tea. But that was Phryne Fisher to him: she made nostalgic and yearning for things he had not once experienced.

 

 _Come after me,_  she had asked of him. An attempt at a romantic overture, she had called it. And he could not help but draw parallels between their story and that of the queen of the Nile and her lover’s, maybe for the millionth time since their paths had crossed. “Be deaf to my unpitied folly” Cleopatra says to Antony. Would Ms. Fisher think him a fool if he followed her? If he were to show up at the door of her family’s home in London, would she tell him he shouldn’t have listened to her foolishness?

 

He had the answer to that question but he kept tossing and turning in his bed because he was scared. Of what exactly he couldn’t have told, for they were many the things about this madness that terrified him. He never thought he could love so much or so deeply, or that the terror of losing someone would make him drink himself to sleep in the solitude and darkness of his office. He had read the musings of other men about adoration so profound it bends you over at its mercy. But reading about it didn’t even begin to compare with having it happen to him. He worshipped her like the egyptian goddess she reminded him of, and he would have swum the Atlantic for her any given day. And that scared him, because those were feelings he never had for Rosie, or for anyone else for that matter. The Honourable Phryne Fisher had knocked the air out of his lungs and the sense out of his mind long before that morning. And now she had asked him to go after her, and he knew that if that airplane would have had one more seat he would have gone to London with her that very day, which was far scarier than anything else, if he didn’t get into account getting up in the middle of the night to look for the only suitcase he owned.

 

She had dared him to go after her and she had made him mad enough to jump head first into the unknown. He was past denying his love for her and he would not waste another hour denying he had tasted and seen and felt how much she wanted him to hold her words against her. There was no foolishness in them just like there hadn’t been any foolishness in Cleopatra’s either. Be the doubts and shadows and fear damned, once he got to London he’d have her to help him battle them.

 

He found the old, worse for wear brown suitcase at last. He’d have to think what to throw in it, but at least he had located it. Intoxicated as he had become by the thought of chasing the starlight Phryne Fisher was, he knew he wouldn’t get any rest that night so he sat at his home desk to start plotting what would be the ultimate romantic overture. He wrote a list of the things he would have to take care of before he left.

 

It was nearing dawn when tiredness caught up with him, be he couldn’t allow himself to go back to bed. He had Mrs. Prudence Stanley to visit and a telegram to send afterwards.


	2. Chapter 2

**CLEOPATRA.** My desolation does begin to make a better life.

_Antony and Cleopatra (5.2.1-2)_

 

They stopped in Darwin for food, fuel and rest. She wasn’t particularly hungry, and she knew that the moment she placed her head on a pillow the memories of Jack’s kisses, caresses and words would rob her of any chance at sleeping. She would have prefered to keep her mind as busy as possible. But airplanes were a delicate thing, and so was her father’s temper when he felt starved- not that she cared about that, she was only doing this for the sake of her mother’s heart. They only landed in Northern Territory because she didn’t fancy a short of combustible in mid-air. Otherwise she would have flown straight to Atamboea on an empty stomach had the machine been able to go on for that long. At least in London she’d suffer from anxiety induced insomnia in a four poster bed.

 

The words she had said to him minutes before take off had surprised her as they were leaving her mouth. But she had meant them. She did want him to go after her. She wanted him, _them_ , more than anything in the world. She had never longed for someone so much, and she found that that amazed her and terrified her in equal parts.

 

It was in her nature to be generous and caring, and when she loved someone she gave them everything she had with no restrains. But she only allowed herself to love those she knew were safe to love. Like Dot or Mr. Butler. Or Bert and Cec. And Jane, the spitting image of the lovely young lady her sister would have grown into if that monster hadn’t killed her. She had allowed Jane into her life because- and deep inside herself she had always known this- it was a second chance thrown at her to save a life in lieu of the one she had lost. But then Mrs. Ross had shown up at her home to see her. She had been so scared she’d lose her too she’d _almost_ wished she hadn’t taken her in. She’d _almost_ wished she didn’t love her as deeply as she did.

 

She felt the same way about Jack. All doubts and denials be damned, she adored him. He had seen her at her worst, he accepted her for who she was, and he would never ask her to change. The level of intimacy he made her crave for had nothing to do with sex. It wasn't that she didn't desire him sexually, because she did. But then again there were many men that aroused her. It wasn't only sex she wanted to share with him. She often found herself wondering what it would be like to sleep nested in his arms. If he'd enjoy sunny afternoons by the lake with her head on his lap like she knew she would. She wanted to have breakfast in bed with him, and have him read poetry to her, and bury her face in his pillow to breathe him in when he left for work in the morning.

 

Maybe when he had fallen for her he had taken her down with him. She had resented him a little for it at first, but perhaps she belonged there. No, she had fallen willingly. She had searched him out after he had told her they couldn’t work together anymore. He had tried to walk away when he had realized he was in too deep, and she had taken him down back with her. When he realized the thought of losing her had become unbearable he had tried to leave on his own accord. He hadn’t expected she’d find the thought of losing _him_ so unbearable that she’d never let him leave. He had put up a hell of a fight, but she had conquered. She always did.

 

She enjoyed life before Jack. She enjoyed it a great deal. The problem was she did so even more now that he was in it. And if he were to step out of it she'd be devastated. She probably needed him by her side more than he needed her, and if that wasn't mortifying enough then the knowledge that being only friends wasn't sufficing for her anymore certainly was.

 

A former lover in the throes of anger when rejected had told her she didn't have the capacity to love, and that she couldn't learn how to even if she tried- which he thought she was too selfish to ever do, he had added. She hadn't contradicted him not because she agreed with him but because she disagreed so much she didn't see a point in wasting both her patience and time telling how so. She did know how to love. In fact, it was a blessing as much as it was a flaw. She loved with such depth she usually bled herself dry. Her lack of interest in commitment had more to do with self preservation and survival instinct than people could have ever guessed.

 

But with the first murder case she solved along came Detective Inspector Robinson. He was a sort of colleague at first. But then they became friends. And then they became so much more.

 

And who could think about the safety of one’s heart when that person had a noble, caring man looking at them as if they were the only, most intriguing thing on Earth and the Heavens above? Men had looked at her with wanton and lust, they had admired and complimented her beauty. She had never found herself wanting male attention, for she knew exactly how to get it. But no one had ever made her feel as exquisite and exotic as Jack had. And it had nothing to do with the way she looked or the clothes she wore or how intoxicating her French perfume was. He saw her as extraordinary as a whole. He was in love with her mind as much as he was in love with the rest of her. He had touched her everywhere in her soul just with his voice and his eyes, and that sure made up for the lack of physical intimacy they had maintained so far.

 

How could she not adore him, her partner in crime?

 

Her father wasn’t finished breakfasting and she couldn’t take another minute patiently waiting at the table, not when she had so much going on through her mind. She expected to arrive at Singapore in a couple of days and had decided they’d stay there for at least two whole days, maybe three. She wanted to let him know that, so he could maybe send her word of what was going on in his mind. She definitely wanted him to know what was going on in hers.

 

She put a hand to her lips as she made her way to the telegraphy station. She had done so several times since landing in Darwin. She craved the feel and taste of him. She missed him, oh how so!

 

WE’LL HAVE ARRIVED AT SINGAPORE BY THE 20TH STOP WE’LL STAY THERE UNTIL THE 23RD STOP I DID MEAN WHAT I SAID AT THE AIRFIELD STOP

 

She made her way back to the hotel, her index and middle fingers still pressed against her lips. For someone who used to think they had experienced in half a lifetime what a hundred people would never experience in two, it sure as hell felt shockingly new to be this madly in love.


	3. Chapter 3

**JESSICA.** But love is blind, and lovers cannot see the pretty follies that themselves commit.

_ The Merchant of Venice (2.6.36-37) _

  
  
  


Mrs. Prudence Stanley didn’t usually approve of silliness. She was a proper english woman educated in the manners of the nineteenth century and she didn’t understand nor see the appeal to the scandalous line of thought the twentieth century had brought about. The shorter the skirts got and the louder the roars for class abolition sounded, the stronger her concerns grew. What kind of country would the Commonwealth of Australia become if the men were marxists and the women behaved so unladylike? She shuddered only thinking about it.

 

She didn’t approve of her niece’s lifestyle, either. Artists and anarchists and communists going in and out of the house! Revolutionaries under her employment! Liaisons with a divorced policeman that had participated in the strike of 1923! She loved Phryne, she did, and it was out of love and worry for her sake that she wished she would be less of a ‘dagger in the garter’ kind of woman and more of a proper one. It had become more and more of a lost cause as of later, and since Arthur’s passing she didn’t have the strenght to go into full battle. But that didn’t mean Mrs. Stanley couldn’t scowl and complain from time to time. 

 

It was with a scowl on her face that she met Detective Inspector Jack Robinson at the parlor of her house that morning. With Phryne on her way to London, she thought she’d seen the last of him at least for quite some time. Without her niece standing too close to him (which of course didn’t please Mrs. Stanley at all) she thought he looked out of place. In fact, she always saw him in the company of Phryne. And lately, she had got used to always seeing Phryne with him, the looks passing between them too intense for her liking, as well.

 

She invited him into the dinning room for a cup of tea, but he politely declined. He wasn’t there on a social call, and for that Mrs. Stanley was thankful- she didn’t feel like entertaining anybody. But it didn’t seem like he was there on police business, either. If her instincts were correct, the reasons that had brought the Senior Detective of City South Police to her home were rather more personal. And she suspected a certain black haired woman with a bob cut and a dagger in her garter was behind them. 

 

He asked for her sister Margaret’s home address in London. He wanted to visit Ms. Fisher there, he said. The nerve of that man! To plan to turn up on the other side of the world uninvited and unannounced! What a bitter, heartbreaking surprise he was in for once he arrived and found Phryne entertained and distracted by the attentions of her ‘old friends’ from England. What was that trip going to cost him? His life savings? Even more perhaps? He was a fool if he thought she’d like to be chased down. Phryne Fisher wasn’t one to fall for romantic overtures. Travel from Melbourne to London! To show up uninvited and unannounced at the Fisher residence! What an addlepated fool! Could it be that his feelings for Phryne had made him so blind he couldn’t see it was complete madness? The man had been fool enough to fall for her. And it was obvious now Mrs. Stanley had given him more credit than she ought to when she thought he wasn’t such a fool he wouldn’t see Phryne was leading him on. In Mrs. Stanley’s opinion, his money and time would be better spent on someone else. 

 

“I’m not sure my niece would appreciate that kind of surprise. Perhaps a letter would be better received” she suggested. If Phryne wasn’t going to let him down because it was convenient to her to have a policeman at the reach of her arm, then Mrs. Stanley would have to step in. “If you wrote her a letter I could send it to her when I send mine” she offered. 

 

A soft chuckle escaped the man’s mouth, and then his lips curled into a smile she’d only seen him wear when he looked at Phryne. What an addlepated fool, indeed! All sense lost when enamoured with a woman. So much for modern men. 

 

“She asked me to go after her” he said “So I don’t think she’ll be surprised”

 

Mrs. Stanley sighed. She didn’t know what Phryne thought she was playing at with the Detective Inspector. What a reckless creature! Inviting a man to her parents’ house on the other side of the ocean! And what a fool he was for taking her words seriously! To throw caution out of the window like that, both of them! What a pair of reckless fools!

 

She gave him the address. She did so reluctantly, but she did it anyway. She didn't want to find out if her instincts were once again wrong and he wouldn't put past him begging for it. 

 

Whatever had been going on between him and her niece before she left was beyond Mrs. Stanley’s knowledge. She had her suspicions but the less she knew the better. When it came to Phryne, less knowledge meant more peace of mind in Mrs. Stanley's experience. If her niece and the inspector wanted to let themselves get carried away by this godforsaken game of mouse and cat, and carry that very game across lands and seas as well, then so be it. They were adults, both of them, it was their choice to behave foolishly.

 

“Have you given any thought what you'll do about your job, inspector?” Mrs. Stanley asked him as he folded the piece of paper she had scribbled the address on. “I take you'll have to ask for time off”

 

“Unpaid leave of absence,” was his reply.

 

She didn't ask him how he was going to afford it, in case he did have means to afford it- which she doubted. As she saw him off she thought he should have thought better before allowing himself to fall for the Honourable Phryne Fisher. To love that woman was a luxury only a very foolish man could afford.


	4. Chapter 4

**HELENA.** Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind. And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind. Nor hath Love’s mind of any judgment taste- Wings and no eyes figure unheedy haste. And therefore is Love said to be a child. Because in choice he is so oft beguiled.

 

_A Midsummer’s Night Dream (1.1.234-39)_

 

She had once asked him to go to a costume party with her because she needed him there to remind her not to be afraid of shadows. His brain and heart and the whole of his anatomy had betrayed him then, for he instantly thought to himself he would go with her to the end of the world if she asked him to. Well, she _had_ asked him now. True to the madness and blindness Shakespeare often wrote about when addressing love, he was going after her.

 

He arrived at the train station an hour before departure time, a suitcase in one hand, a leather briefcase and a disguised copy of D. H. Lawrence’s _Miss Chatterley’s Lover_ under his arm. He’d arrived in Russia the day before and had got a second hand overcoat and a scarf for a couple of Russian roubles- Siberian winter was harsh, he hadn’t anticipated correctly how so. Just like he had not anticipated a lot of the things he had faced since he’d left Melbourne. But he was a resourceful man and he was determined to get to Phryne in one piece.

 

He had spent the night in a small room adjacent to a bookshop owned by an acquaintance of Cec and Bert’s. The men had given him the address and told him they’d send out word so he’d be welcomed there. Jack didn’t have time to think the pair of cabbies had finally come to like him- they made clear they were doing that for Ms. Fisher, not for him. He had been thankful nonetheless.

 

Mr. Boris Chetkov’s knowledge of the English tongue was good enough that they could understand each other. He had given Jack the book by D. H. Lawrence he was now carrying with him, the cover carefully replaced so that it looked like some plain History textbook. When Jack had left the bookshop earlier that morning, he did it with the vague feeling that Mr. Chetkov ran some sort of illicit business replacing the covers of the works of forbidden authors in a language foreign to his own. He probably sold them to european and australian smugglers that had their own illicit business back where they were from. Jack also suspected that that was how Cec and Bert knew him, and he wondered if Ms. Fisher herself had obtained some of the darker, more sensual books she loved to devour thanks to Mr. Chetkov’s venture.

 

He hadn’t slept well since he had left Melbourne. The bunk bed in the ship to Kamchatka had had a thin mattress, and the one at Mr. Chetkov’s had been even thinner. He hadn’t been eating properly, either. But he had slept less and tasted worse food when he had been in the war. So he didn’t complain. He knew what he was getting into the day he had asked Mrs. Stanley for Phryne’s address in London and requested an unpaid leave of absence. He knew he wasn’t up for smooth sailing, so to speak. But every day he spent travelling was one less day he would have to spend missing her.

 

He had stopped by the telegraphy station after leaving Mr. Chetkov’s bookstore to send three wires. One had been for Mr. Butler, another one for Mrs. Collins, and the third one had been addressed to 57 Wimpole Street, London, to the Honourable Phryne Fisher.

 

She had sent him a telegram from Darwin to let him know the dates she would be in Singapore. He had sent one back there and she had replied before leaving, informing him of her plans to spend a week in Calcutta from the 26th to the 30th. His last telegrams from Melbourne had been sent there. Then on the 31st he had left Australia on a ship to Russia. He didn’t know exactly where in her journey Phryne was now or if she had already arrived in London (she probably had), so his safest bet was to send word of his whereabouts to the address Aunt Prudence had given him.

 

He had kept all of Phryne’s telegrams. He had them neatly folded in the leather briefcase. They made him feel closer to her. He also had a stack of letters he had been writing to her, one for each day they had spent apart. He wasn’t planning to give them to her- he was writing them for his own sake. He missed her. She had become his best friend, and she definitely was the person he talked to the most. So when he put pen to paper he pretended to be talking to her. That way he could pour his thoughts and feelings somewhere safe. Stowed with the letters were the mugshots Constable Collins had taken of her that night after the Green Mill murder. He had kept them all this time, and they had become one of his most valuable possessions. When he looked at them he didn’t just see Ms. Fisher being her usual silly, fun-loving self: it felt like that by staring at her bright eyes and teasing smile he was peering directly at her bare soul, the part of her he adored the most.

 

When seated inside his train compartment he took out the telegrams to read one more time. He knew them by heart but it always did him good to read them again. They were just a few words, mostly updates on her whereabouts, but they were from her. In his replies he had told her the date of his ship’s departure and that once he arrived in Russia he’d proceed by train from there. Maybe it was silly that he treasured them so much but he couldn’t help himself. They were tangible proof that she was thinking of him, that she wanted him there with her. That she missed him.

 

The last wire she had sent to him had arrived the morning before he left Melbourne. It contained no details about her journey to London whatsoever, just a single question. It was this one that he treasured most. As the train left the station he ran the tip of his thumb along the typescript words like he would along her spine if he were caressing it before kissing her. It simply read:

 

WHEN DID YOU KNOW? STOP

 

She had offered no context but he didn’t need one, and she had probably known that when she had sent the telegram. He understood what she was asking him. She wanted to know when he’d realized he was falling for her, when he’d accepted that he was on a rollercoaster he couldn’t get out of. He’d never told her he loved her but it had been implied several times, and if implications hadn’t been enough then the adoring way he looked at her and his reaction when he thought she had died in that car crash had had to give him away.

 

But she was asking him exactly when he had begun to fall.

 

He hadn’t needed to think twice. He knew exactly when he had begun to fall for her and when he had fallen completely. He had gone to the telegraphy station to send his reply right away.

 

I KNEW YOU WERE TROUBLE WHEN YOU TOOK JANE IN STOP I KNEW I WAS IN TROUBLE WHEN I KEPT YOUR MUGSHOTS STOP

 

If he had any luck, it’d get to Calcutta before she left for Jhansi. If it missed her, he’d tell her in person when he had her in his arms. He’d tell her over and over again if she let him. He wasn’t going to ask her when she knew- it was up to her if she wanted to tell him. He didn’t need to know anything. He was happy just to _feel_ that she did care for him and that she wanted him to be with her.

 

The train was moving at full speed. He placed the telegrams back inside the brown leather briefcase. He opened the copy of _Lady Chatterley’s Lover_ and began to read.

 

“ _O_ _urs is essentially a tragic age, so we refused to take it tragically…_ ”

  



	5. Chapter 5

**EMILIA.** I know a lady in Venice would have walked barefoot to Palestine for a touch of his nether lip.

_Othello (4.3.39-40)_

 

She had arrived to Baghdad on November 3rd after a few days rest in Calcutta. They had left Melbourne on October 15th, but to her it felt like the life and family she had built for herself in the St Kilda home had happened in another life altogether. Every moment spent in the company of her father exhausted her emotionally, and the hours spent flying the plane were taking a toll on her physically. But she was determined to make as little stops as she could. She had landed in Atamboea and Sourabaya before getting to Singapore, but they’d only spent one night there. Then she had landed in Singora, Bangkok and Insein before getting to Calcutta, but they’d stayed just for the night as well.

 

She had wanted to spend a week in Calcutta mainly for two reasons. The first was that she was interested in the indian independence movement. She wanted to learn more about the role the former capital of the british-held territories in India was playing in it. Her father had no interest in this whatsoever and he would have rather they kept traveling, meaning that their week there would serve him as punishment. The other reason was that she wished to hear from Jack.

 

Thanks to the telegraph, communications between countries were much easier these days. So she hoped that they’d be able to send a couple more telegrams to each other if she spent a whole week somewhere along the way. She had got word from him in Singapore. A ship to Russia was leaving the Melbourne port on October 31st and he’d be on board. Then he’d proceed by train to meet with her in London. She couldn’t be more excited about it, a notion that she found both thrilling and terrifying.

 

It’d been a long time since Phryne had had sleepless nights, but she was finding insomnia hard to fight. She was worried about what would happen once her parents reunited, she missed Dot and Hugh and everyone back in Melbourne, and she was anxious to know if things between her and Jack would work. She hoped they would, for the sake of both their hearts.

 

She still wasn’t the marrying type, she probably would never be. She used to think she wasn’t one to be caged by the boundaries of a committed relationship, either. She still thought that. She valued her freedom more than anything else in the world. But at the same time she wanted Jack more than she had ever wanted any other person or any other thing. Phryne knew he’d always take her as she was, he would never ask her to change a thing about herself. She didn’t want to change, either. But she was finding it, had been finding it for quite some time now, harder to want to be with anyone but him.

 

She didn’t know exactly when or how- it had been a collection of glances and touches and whispers and night caps and moments, she suspected- but she had allowed herself to fall for him. She also suspected he knew exactly the time and date, so she had sent him a wire asking him. It had been a question with no context whatsoever, but she was sure he’d understand what she was referring to. He always did. The level of understanding they were capable of reaching without uttering a single word was astonishing. It was one of the things she loved most about their relationship.

 

His reply- sent hours before he left Australia, surely- had left her both breathless and speechless. He had fallen for her right after they met, when he still was married to Rosie (at least on paper), and he had no trouble denying that just like he had no trouble admitting he had kept the mugshots. She doubted he would have confessed that quickly and that willingly before their farewell kiss, but things have changed between them. She had invited him to follow her to the other side of the Indian Ocean and he had agreed to. He had requested a leave of absence and God knows what else he had had to do, but he had done those things and now he was going to her. Her dear Detective Inspector Jack Robinson had left everything at the drop of a hat for her. And that didn’t make her feel powerful, no. It was marvellous as it was scary. She was a great deal of important, meaningful things to him like he was to her. Love was indeed a wonderful, terrible, beautiful, dangerous thing that made you act on impulse like a crazy fool and ask someone to follow you to the other side of the world or follow someone to the other side of the world. Or keep someone’s scarf and wear it around your neck late at night in your Calcutta room because you miss them terribly and you’re way beyond caring just how silly that would look to anyone over the age of fifteen.

 

It was all sort of ridiculous, this being in love thing. She thought of him, and longed for him, and dreamed of him, and she often caught herself wondering what it would be like to rub his back softly while he fell asleep on a comfortable bed- her bed- for the first time after all those weeks travelling just to be with her.

 

She was used to having men in her bed for sex (or on her bedroom floor, or in her bathtub, or against a door or a wall- she liked variety) and have them gone before sunrise. She prefered sleeping alone and if she allowed a man to stay the night it generally meant she was too exhausted to hint they should leave. But she wanted to sleep with Jack, and she also wanted to _sleep_ with Jack. Bunk beds and trains weren’t comfortable to sleep in, he was going to be starved and worn down when he arrived. She wanted nothing more than to stroke his hair and hear him whisper nonsense about his journey there until he finally fell asleep in her arms, on her bed, the pair of them sharing the same pillow. She couldn’t deny that she was lovesick.

 

She didn’t feel trapped like she always thought she would if she ever let her heart be someone else’s as much as it was hers. On the contrary, she felt a sense of freedom and happiness she had not experienced so fully since she was a child and ran around Collingwood with Janey on her heels, laughing and singing carelessly, unaware of what horrendous things the future held. She loved him so much losing him wasn’t as unbearable as not trying. It wasn’t going to be easy, but then again nothing that mattered ever was. And their relationship mattered to her so much it was a given it was going to be the most difficult thing she would ever do. But if Jack could dive into the unknown for her, then so could she.

 

What would her answer have been if the situation had been the other way around? What if they had transferred him somewhere other than City South and he had asked her to go after him? She didn’t need to think it over twice, just like she was sure he hadn’t needed to think much to answer the question in her telegram. She would have said yes. She would have gone to him, followed him anywhere he would have decided to go to. And it wouldn’t have felt like willingly walking into jail or giving herself up just to please him. She would have done it for herself just as much, the same way he was going to London for her and for himself. For them.

 

She was known for living life recklessly. She liked that about herself. One is born with no certainty but that of death, and death was a guest that liked to impose and did not usually send you word before visiting. So she lived every day as if it were her last, just like she used to with Janey, taking joy in every little thing. Her younger sister had taught her that. Now it seemed like Detective Inspector Jack Robinson had taught her to love recklessly. Him of all people, to do something reckless! And to teach it to _her_ , nonetheless! Who would have thought!

 

Very ridiculous, indeed, this whole madness about being in love.

 

* * *

 

They got to Vienna on the 12th of November. They were close to home now. She estimated that they would be landing in London in about six to seven days, five maybe if the weather was good.

 

She had decided to stay in a suite at the Ritz on Piccadilly Street. To live under the same roof as her parents was out of question for her. They had several and severe marital problems to work on, and she didn’t fancy being caught up in the middle of their battle. She had had enough of that during her childhood. Now she had the means to go somewhere else and she wasn’t one to waste the advantages she had. Besides, she wanted to be alone with Jack. She didn’t want her mother asking questions or making assumptions. She wouldn’t feel comfortable taking the first steps into this relationship under the scrutiny of her parents. Most of all, she wanted him to feel comfortable and at home, and she knew he would never agree to staying at the Fisher residence. She wanted them to have absolute freedom to enjoy themselves.

 

Oh, how wonderful it would be to experience Europe through his eyes! She always took greater pleasure in sensible things like the arts and theater and music when shared with him. He had a quiet way to appreciate beauty in the world that fascinated her.

 

As she pondered about this over a cup of tea and a delicious viennese Apfelstrudel at the hotel restaurant, her father interrupted her by doing something she found most annoying- sharings his opinion on her life.

 

“I never thought I’d see the day you’d fall in love with anyone”

 

The words took her by surprise. Her father hadn’t mentioned Jack or the kiss. She had hope he would never speak of it, but she should have known better, shouldn’t she? It was her father, after all.

 

“I beg your pardon?”

 

“You’re thinking about him just now, right? You always have that expression on your face when you do”

 

Phryne put down her cup of tea and fork.

 

“And what expression would that be?” she asked in a tone that indicated she wasn’t either amused by or interested in the topic. Or at least she didn’t have any interest in sharing it with her father.

 

“The same one he’s got when he looks at you” Henry Fisher said simply.

 

“I don’t know what or who you’re talking about, father” she placed the napkin on the table and stood up to go back to her room. She was almost certain she heard him say:

 

“Of course you do”

 

She was tired and she wanted to be alone, maybe rest her eyes for half an hour. Perhaps read again what (only in the privacy of her own head) she had started calling Jack’s love telegrams. What she did know was that there was no way she would discuss with her father what expression showed on her face every time she thought of Jack, or what expression Jack made when looking at her, or how her father had come to notice and recognize both.

 

What a tiring, ridiculous and- now it seemed- obvious madness this whole being in love thing was.

 


	6. Chapter 6

**OPHELIA.** We know what we are, but know not what we may be.

_Hamlet (4.5.5-6)_

 

Married life suited Mrs. Dorothy Collins well. She loved being a wife and fulfilling her wife duties as much as she loved her temporary job answering the letters of the readers of _Women’s Choice_ that wrote to the magazine seeking advice. Mrs. Charlesworth had offered her the position again shortly after Ms. Fisher had left Australia, and this time she had said yes.

 

Before Ms. Fisher crossed her path, Dot only had experience working as a maid. With Ms. Fisher she had learned about private detecting, clue recollection and witness interrogation techniques on the job. She had learned to be observant and pay attention to detail, too. Ms. Fisher had been patient with her, had trusted her. She had taught her a lot of things about the world and women’s rights. Dot had blossomed and discovered herself under Ms. Fisher’s employment. Ms. Fisher believed she was an intelligent, capable woman that could achieve anything she set her mind to. And Dot had come to believe that about herself, as well. She had enjoyed every moment of their mystery solving adventures.

 

But now Ms. Fisher had gone to tend to family matters in Europe. Family was important, in Dot’s opinion, and she was glad her Miss had decided to help her parents. They had endured so much suffering, with losing a child and all. Dot couldn’t imagine how one could still be the same after something like that. She hoped God in His infinite wisdom used Ms. Fisher as a tool in His hands to guide the Baron and the Baroness toward reconciliation. It wouldn’t be the first time God used her as His tool- He had already done so when He had made her find it in her heart to give Dot a job, and a home with a room of her very own for the first time, and the opportunity to appreciate just how valuable she was.

 

The Honourable Phryne Fisher had helped her, a perfect stranger, in her greatest time of need. It was only natural that she would do practically anything to get her father to London safe and in time to prevent her mother’s heart from breaking. But Dot missed her and the fun they used to have together. As she had been helping her pack, Ms. Fisher had taken in Dot’s bittersweet mood and had promised her she wouldn’t be gone forever. Dot always believed in the promises her Miss made- she only promised that which she knew she could see through. But it had saddened her to see her go, nonetheless.

 

She had cheered up a little bit when Inspector Detective Robinson had informed her and Hugh he would be joining Ms. Fisher in Europe at her Miss’ request. The Inspector was openly in love with Ms. Fisher, and she suspected her Miss’ feelings matched that of the Inspector’s. For a modern woman that led such a liberal lifestyle and saw monogamy the way Daniel must have seen the lions’ den, extending the Inspector an invitation to join her somewhere half across the globe was a big step. It also meant she had come to terms with the fact that no one else would do. She was proud of her Miss because of that. She knew it took courage to stand up to one’s beliefs and admit to yourself to have changed your mind about something you thought you’d never want to trade for anything. But if there was something the Honourable Phryne Fisher had lots of, that was courage.

 

With her Miss gone she had little to do other than house chores. And with the Inspector gone and the new promotion Hugh had a lot on his plate. He was working so much and so hard, and with such passion and enthusiasm. He was showing everyone all his wit and worth, and the Inspector’s replacement- a very correct gentleman, Dot had met him once- was very satisfied with him and considered him an important asset at the City South Police Station. This made the newlywed couple so happy and proud! But now that she wasn’t working with a private detective they didn’t get to see each other with the frequency they used to. Dot brought her husband lunch to the station every day, but that was it. She didn’t mind mending socks and sewing shirts, it was almost the same as mending stockings and sewing dresses, if not easier. But she had got used to more. She craved more. One could suppose the thrilling, exhilarating lifestyle Ms. Fisher had shown her had rubbed off on her a little, and now she desired and longed for an occupation to fill her time with.

 

And then when Dot didn’t think she could bake one more pie for the church sale without falling asleep on the stove, Mrs. Charlesworth had contacted her with a job offer. She had liked Dot’s writing style, Mrs. Charlesworth said, and she thought it would be lovely to have a young lady’s perspective and common sense. Would she be interested in reconsidering the answer she had given _Women’s Choice_ the last time?

 

Dot shared the news with Hugh over a warm cup of tea and a tray of freshly baked scones. It was a routine of theirs she loved so much, sharing stories about their days while they drank the tea and ate the baked goods. Dot would go to the magazine’s office three times a week, and on Wednesdays and Fridays she’d work from home. Mrs. Charlesworth would give her a brand new typing machine she could use at the office and a fairly good one to take home and use the days she wrote from there. Dot was beaming as she told her husband all of this. His wife’s happiness made Constable Collins happy, so he kissed her and congratulated her on her new position as the writer of the advice column for _Women’s Choice_. He had married a modern, independent woman, the loveliest one had had ever met. And he loved her for that. He told her so. Dot couldn’t have felt happier.

 

So now she was writing for _Women’s Choice_ until Ms. Fisher returned from her trip to Europe. She really enjoyed it and, what was almost as satisfying, people enjoyed reading her! Mrs. Charlesworth had told her they’d see about adding a column for newlywed modern women if she was up to writing that one too, and Dot was delighted at the prospect. And a little bit terrified, too, if she was honest. She wouldn’t be just answering questions now, she would be choosing a topic and writing about it from scratch. The idea was very appealing, and she couldn’t wait to send Ms. Fisher a copy of the first number that featured this new column by her. She had saved some money from her paycheck to send Ms. Fisher her first written column ever to her address in London. She felt so proud of herself! And she was so thankful to her Miss for helping her become this brave woman she’d never thought she’d be.

 

Ms. Fisher had sent her a telegram the same day she had finally landed in London. Dot had thanked the Lord she had got there safe. She informed her she would be staying at the Ritz. The telegram had arrived on a Friday, so Dot had been home working. Three weeks had passed since then when she received, also on a Friday, a telegram from the Inspector.

 

I ARRIVED AT BRIGHTON THIS MORNING STOP I’LL BOARD THE TRAIN TO LONDON TOMORROW MORNING STOP MS FISHER WILL MEET ME AT KING CROSS STOP I SEND YOU AND CONSTABLE COLLINS MY BEST STOP

 

The Inspector had arrived in England safely! And he would be meeting Ms. Fisher soon! How romantic would that be! Two people that cared so much for each other finally embracing one another after some time spent apart! Dot wished she could be there to see the expression of pure joy on her Miss’ face, and the smile on the Inspector’s.

 

She wholeheartedly wished them the best. She had faith everything would be alright for them, and she prayed to God every night that He looked over them. Dot believed that love conquered all, and if love couldn’t do the trick in this case then Ms. Fisher would.

 

Hugh would be delighted to hear the news about the Inspector when she visited him at lunch time. She still had some time to write before she went down to the station. Thinking that she could take some time off answering letters from readers, Dot put her mind and imagination to venturing into something else. She felt inspired, and she remembered hearing Mrs. Charlesworth say the magazine could use a new work of fiction to publish. Perhaps she should give it a try, Dot thought. She had always enjoyed reading, an habit Miss Fisher had always encouraged. Now that she had discovered she enjoyed writing, and she felt this tingly sensation on the tip of her fingers, urging her to write the words she was hearing in her head.

 

_"It was the ending of an adventure and the beginning of the next one…"_

 

                          


	7. Chapter 7

**DON PEDRO.** Speak low if you speak of love.

_ Much Ado About Nothing (2.1.78) _

  
  


She looked at the clock. It was five past eleven in the morning. The train should have arrived at the station fifteen minutes ago. Whatever happened to so called English punctuality? The railway system in Australia was like clockwork. Yes, sometimes a passenger would murder a relative and steal their expensive jewelry, but the trains were always on time. That was what the Honourable Phryne Fisher considered an efficient service.

 

The London Express from Brighton had to arrive at Platform 9 at ten to eleven. That was what Jack had said on his telegram. Now twenty minutes had passed and she was becoming impatient. But then important moments between her and Jack had always been interrupted or delayed, so why should it be any different this time? 

 

Phryne exhaled impatiently and a small cloud similar to fog formed in the air. During the days previous to the start of winter, the London weather was always rainy and cold. It hadn’t snowed yet, but it would soon. A train from Edinburgh had arrived at Platform 10 around a quarter to eleven. A wave of passengers wearing heavy coats had come off the wagons with their suitcases and trunks and umbrellas. They had all looked so dull, men and women alike, dressed in varying shades of grey- as if they’d had the sky in mind when they’d taken them out of their hangers. Phryne’s outwear- a beautiful burgundy beret and a cream coloured double breasted trench coat- had been chosen to match the green and red men’s scarf she had around her neck. 

 

At a quarter past eleven the London Express from Brighton arrived to the platform at last. And at the sight of the railway engine, Phryne’s heart skipped a beat. Nothing would be the same after today. Detective Inspector Jack Robinson was on that train. He had come there out of his love for her. And she was there, standing in the middle of Platform 9 wearing the scarf he’d given her, because she was in love with him. It couldn’t be any simpler, and at the same time it was the most complex thing she had ever felt. It also was the most complicated mystery she’d ever had to solve. But now she had him. He was there, would be in her arms in a matter of minutes, so they could solve it together. It was what they did best, after all. And what is love if not the greatest mystery that ever existed? 

 

A new batch of travelers were getting off the train compartments. A homogeneous mass of men dressed in overcoats and wearing hats on their heads were rapidly walking down the platform to the exits. They all looked the same. None of them were Jack. Her heart was beating so hard now it was making her ribs hurt. She wasn’t used to this kind of adrenaline (but then again, she wasn’t used to being in love or to romantic overtures either- and this encounter would be the result of both). She found that she liked it. After all, they did often say that pain and pleasure were close.

 

The world around her went still when she finally saw him.

 

“Jack” she whispered to herself, breathlessly and almost in disbelief. A long time had passed since she’d last spoken his name out loud. If she remembered correctly, the last time had been the morning of their farewell. On the lonely nights she had spent stretched on the beds of european hotel rooms she had been completely silent while pleasing herself. Only thoughts of him had been on her mind, but she couldn’t remember calling out his name audibly. She hadn’t wanted to, had bitten her tongue every time she felt it was about to happen. She didn’t want to rob him of the chance of being responsible for her crying out his name in pure ecstasy for the first time.

 

Their eyes locked. He had been searching the crowd for her with his gaze as well. The distance between them was now reduced to a couple of steps. She felt suspended in time and space. She couldn’t tell if she had moved closer, or if he had. She wasn't sure she remembered her own name. All she knew with certainty was that they had found each other and had collided and now their mouths were crashing. He held her by the waist and swept her off her feet as they kissed. 

 

They both were an assault to the other’s senses, His face was warm and soft and he smelt of aftershave. She ran a gloved hand over his head and felt a sting of desperation because the thick wool was acting as a barrier between his hair and her caresses. She wondered if he could smell the perfume she’d chosen to wear- it was the same one she had worn that night in Queenscliff, when he had acknowledged her presence in the dark because it had given her away. It was the only bottle of perfume she’d taken with her to London. It made her think of him. Sometimes it had helped her when she’d felt overwhelmed by how much she missed him- other times it had been torture because it’d made her miss him even more.

 

But now he was there. Everything that had happened before this very moment was part of something bigger that had led them both to fall into each other's arms. And that, she realized, was what overwhelmed her most.

 

He tugged on her lower lip with his teeth before breaking the kiss, and then he rested his forehead on hers. They both kept their eyes closed for a few seconds as he cupped her face in his hands and softly rubbed the bridge of her nose with the tip of his own. They could have sworn they were the only thing that existed in an otherwise empty world. They sure were the only thing that mattered to the other.

 

He opened his eyes and kissed Phryne's closed eyelids. She opened them to see him looking at her with what could only be described as adoration. She moved back an inch to take him in properly. He was tired, she could tell. She now noticed the old brown suitcase that he’d dropped to his side before gathering her in his arms. The leather briefcase he had been carrying under his arm had fallen to the floor as well. He seemed to realize this as well because he rapidly picked both up without taking his eyes off her.

 

“You kept the scarf”

 

She smiled. 

 

“You kept the mugshots” she replied, matter-of-factly.

 

He understood. She knew he did. His smile as bright as the sun told her that he did understand.

 

He kissed her on the lips and then held her by the waist with the arm that didn't have the briefcase under it. As they began to walk to the exit she rested her head on his shoulder. They weren't in a hurry, they didn't feel the need to say any other words yet. They had time, she knew. Where she was concerned, they had all the time in the world and more.


	8. Chapter 8

**ENOBARBUS.** I saw her once hop forty paces through the public street, and having lost her breath, she spoke, and panted, that she did defect perfection, and, breathless, pour breath forth.

 

 **MACENAS.** Now Antony must leave her utterly.

 

 **ENOBARBUS.** Never. He will not. Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety. Other women cloy the appetites they feed, but she makes hungry where most she satisfies, for vilest things become themselves in her, that the holy priests bless her when she is riggish.

 

_Antony and Cleopatra (2.2.238-51)_

 

She didn't have a car in London, so they took a cab to the Ritz Hotel in Piccadilly street. They spent the ride in silence. He was so tired he had been scared he would fall asleep the moment they got in the cab. The weeks he’d spent traveling were taking a toll on him. But how could he slip into unconsciousness when he was so aware of her perfume, and her breathing, and the warmth of her body in contrast to the cold London weather?

 

He held her close to him and she rested her head on his arm, eyes closed, breathing him in. He would reach down to drop a kiss on her forehead or nuzzle her hair with his nose every other minute. She smelt exactly like he remembered- of books, and orchids, and a nice cup of tea, and everything he loved.

 

They walked into the hotel hand in hand. For the first time in his life he didn't care what anyone else thought. He hadn't followed her to the other side of the Indian Ocean to deny her or himself anything. So if she wanted them to hold hands as they made their way to the elevator, he was happy to oblige. He very well knew that if it were up to him he’d never let go of her. He was hers to keep, to have and to hold. His hand, his heart, anything she wanted was hers. He was all hers.

 

They didn't utter a word until they were in the three room suite and she closed the door behind them.

 

“Welcome home, Jack”

 

Home. It didn’t matter that he’d never set foot there before that day- it was home because she made it feel so. Melbourne or London were just cities, nothing more. She was his home, had been for quite some time now.

 

He cupped her face in his hands and kissed her softly, their lips barely touching. She stood on her tiptoes to kiss his forehead, the bridge of his nose, the tip of his nose, the corner of his mouth, his jaw. It felt like heaven, but it didn’t feel like teasing. They were just caresses, and each one of them meant so much to him. The brush of her lips against his skin could have been barely audible to the rest of the world, but it spoke volumes to him. The words she didn’t know how to say yet were coming out of her mouth and reaching him in the shape of kisses. He thought it was glorious, and poetic, and so like her.

 

“You must be exhausted” she said softly, tracing the side of his face with her fingertip. “You musn’t have slept properly since you left Melbourne. I know I haven’t” she confessed. “I thought maybe you’d want to have a bath and change into more comfortable clothes when you arrived, so I asked the staff to have everything prepared. The train was only a couple of minutes late, so the water should still be warm. Then perhaps we could take a nap”.

 

A bath sounded almost as heavenly as her voice did, and a couple hours of sleep on a proper bed was something he had been dreaming of since the day he had boarded that ship to Russia. He had rarely taken a nap in the middle of a week day- in fact, he was positive he’d never taken a nap as a grown up. It was a luxury he wasn’t used to. Just like the beautifully furnished suite he’d be staying at with her. Just like Phryne’s kisses.

 

“Thank you”

 

“I bought you a present. You’ll find it in the bathroom”. He raised an eyebrow playfully and gave her a little grin. She laughed and slapped his arms gently. He loved how well they understood each other without the need for words. “They’re pajamas. Pine green cotton”. She shrugged her shoulders. “I thought the colour would go well with your eyes”. She pointed to a door to his left. “One of the bathrooms is that way”.

 

He kissed the tip of her nose and went into the bathroom, the suitcase still in his hand. Bathing felt as glorious as he’d imagined it would, and the pajamas were perfect for him. She’d chosen a two piece set with vertical stripes. It was simple and traditional and what he would have bought for himself. He smiled when he saw his reflection on the full length mirror that was in a corner of the bathroom- she was right, that shade of green went well with his eyes. It occurred to him that it’d go even better with _hers_ , and the thought of Phryne wearing nothing but the unbuttoned shirt was enough to send a shiver down his spine.

 

She was sitting on the couch in the living area, with her knees to her chest and her head resting atop them. She had taken a quick bath as well- the main bedroom of a suite like this one surely had its own bathroom- and changed into a peach colored V neck shirt and loose pants. She was barefoot, not a drop of makeup on her face. There was a fragility about her that was beyond exquisite. He’d never tire of seeing the million sides that there were to her. The more he saw of her, the more he adored her.

 

She offered him a hand when she saw him. He took it and helped her on her feet. He let her guide him to the bedroom, to a bed she hadn’t shared with anyone yet. A bed she'd be sharing with him. She closed the curtains so the midday sun wouldn’t disturb them, and then she lay on her side in the centre of the bed. He lay on his right side opposite her. They both rested their heads on the same feather pillow.

 

“Stay in bed with me all day?” she asked.

 

He draped an arm over her waist and pulled her closer to him. She tucked a leg between his legs and rubbed her foot against one of his affectionately. Their noses were an inch apart and he could count her freckles.

 

“Stay tomorrow, too” she whispered. “And the day after tomorrow, as well”. She started to slowly draw circles with her thumb behind his ear. His eyelids dropped on their own accord, powerless to her touch. “And the day after that”. He kissed the palm of her hand, and then the length of each finger. When he was done, she withdrew her hand slowly and let it rest on his chest. “Stay with me, Jack Robinson. I promise I won’t be reckless with the care of your heart”.

 

His breath caught in his throat.

 

“My heart is yours to be reckless with”

 

“If it's mine, then it's mine to care for”

 

She rendered him speechless. How in love he was with her. 

 

“Now sleep, my dear detective inspector”

 

He closed his eyes, the Honourable Phryne Fisher in his arms and his heart in her care. He pressed his lips to her forehead. He noticed she hadn’t removed her hand from his chest. And like that they fell asleep.


	9. Chapter 9

**MACBETH.** Who could refrain, that had a heart to love, and in that heart courage to make’s love known?

 

_Macbeth (2.3.96-99)_

 

She woke up to the sound of soft snores coming from the man that was asleep in her arms. She kept her eyes closed, but her detective skills kicked in and she noticed some things were different than they had been before they fell into a deep slumber. They were both laying on their left side, he had his back to her and she was spooning him. They must have shifted positions at some point in their sleep. One of her hands was resting on his stomach, the other one was still placed on his chest. She could feel his heartbeat. Her leg was still tucked between his. Their heads were still on the same pillow.

 

She pressed her lips and nose to his shoulder and breathed him in. He smelt like soap. It didn’t bother her that he snored, or that it had woken her up. It was soft and rhythmic and soothing. She thought that maybe she'd let it lull her back to sleep.

 

Jack made her crave a level of intimacy she’d never wanted or thought about much before. He made her feel safe. No one in her life had ever made her feel that. She had been uncared for as a child. She had been cold in the winters, and the nights she had gone to bed unfed outnumbered the ones she had had a piece of bread and some soup for dinner, and her father had never done anything to change that because he had had everything he needed- alcohol. If his conscience ever hit him, he must have made sure to knock it down with bourbon and the likes of it. If they hadn’t starved it had been because of her mother. But providing your children with dinner a few times a week and making them feel safe were two very different things.

 

So she had learned to fend for herself, and she had grown into a woman that depended on absolutely no one. Her safety was her own responsibility, and no one else’s. It was her own doing, and no one else’s. But then along had come this beautiful man, with his eyes filled with honesty and nobility, and a heart that ran as deep as the Pacific Ocean. And he always had the exact words to remind her not to be afraid of shadows. And he loved her. And he made her feel safe.

 

Her throat tightened at those thoughts, and she suddenly felt like crying. What a strange wonder being in love was! One moment she felt like bursting into laughter because of how nice his sleeping noises were, and the next one her eyes were watering with tears. It was pure madness. It was pure bliss.

 

She wished she could turn him around without waking him up so she could watch him while he slept, trace the lines of his face with her fingertips, count how many wrinkles he had. But she didn’t want to disturb him. He had come a long way. He needed to rest. She nuzzled his back with her nose, sighing. She’d never been good at waiting or keeping quiet. She wanted to kiss him, and make love to him, and find out if he was ticklish and where. She wanted to ask him if he had brought any books with him in that suitcase of his and have him read them out loud to her. She felt like bursting into laughter again.

 

“You make me feel safe, Jack Robinson” she whispered to herself, her mouth against the fabric of the pajamas she had bought for him, her lips barely moving.

 

And then she pressed her ear to his warm back so she could listen to his heartbeat. And the symphony his body was playing- his snores, his breathing, his heartbeats- lulled her back to sleep.

 

* * *

 

She woke up sometime later. Jack was laying on his right side again, facing her. He was awake, looking at her adoringly. She found that it didn't unsettle her or make her feel uncomfortable.

 

“Hello Jack” she said softly. He nuzzled her nose with his for all response. She ran a hand through his hair. She messed it up a little. She thought it looked adorable. She decided to tease him “Were you watching me sleep?”

 

“I was counting your freckles”

 

“You sweet, ridiculous man” she sighed. “Should we ask they bring us something to eat?”. She figured he’d be famished. She knew she was.

 

“That sounds nice”

 

“Breakfast in bed?” she offered.

 

He laughed. How she adored his laughter.

 

“I think it hardly is time for breakfast”

 

“I have very strict rules for men that travel across the Indian Ocean to be with me” she said. “There are no schedules and no obligations. We have nowhere to be but here with each other. We answer to no one but ourselves. Whatever we feel like doing we do. It doesn't matter if something wouldn't seem proper to other people, it only matters that we are comfortable with it. So right now clocks may say it's almost tea time, but I feel like having breakfast in bed with you. Do you want to have breakfast in bed with me?”

 

He kissed her forehead. She could feel his smile pressed against her skin. She took it as a yes. That smile was still on his face when he looked at her.

 

“Tell me exactly, how many men have you asked to follow you to another continent?”

 

“Just the one” she said, smiling. “Have breakfast in bed with me?” she asked again.

 

“What am I going to do with you, Phryne Fisher?” he sighed.

 

She had many answers to that question. But they had time for all those other things she wanted to do with him, lots of it. She didn't like planning, she wanted things to be spontaneous between them. And right now she wanted to eat toast with jam and drink tea while he told her about all the cities where he had made stops.

 

She shrugged her shoulders and smiled.

 

“Right now? Have breakfast in bed with me, I suppose. We'll see what else we can come up with later”

 

He laughed, and it made her feel like laughing. And he kissed her forehead again, and he made her feel safe.


	10. Chapter 10

**BENEDICK.** I will live in thy heart, die in thy lap, and be buried in thy eyes.

 

_Much Ado About Nothing (5.2.80-81)_

  


He had never spent so much time in bed with a woman, not even when he and Rosie had been young newlyweds. They hadn’t even shared a bed for long, not even for sleeping. Rosie had never tolerated that he snored, she said it bothered her and that the lack of rest was the cause of her migranes. He had moved to the guest room early in their marriage and he had only visited her bed on certain nights, but he had always gone back to the guest room to sleep afterwards. His former wife had never liked displays of affection very much. To her, physical intimacy with him had been means to an end: conception. When she realized a baby wouldn’t happen for them, she lost all interest in being with him in any way that didn’t imply she was only fulfilling her duties as a wife. He didn’t want her to do anything simply out of duty. He had never viewed sex as a chore husband and wife must do from time to time for the sake of the institution of marriage. So he lost all desire for her as well.

 

They had grown estranged for a lot of reasons- being unable to conceive a child had been just one of them, the last straw to the camel’s back, he supposed. War had changed him, it had changed her, and he sometimes had doubted if trying for a child hadn’t been an excuse to make herself stay with him and him with her. And some days he was glad they had never been blessed with one. No one deserved to be born out of a couple’s desperation to stay together because separations were thought to be improper.

 

His affair with Concetta, however passionate, had been brief. He had never stayed the night. She had asked, but he hadn’t wanted to. It wouldn’t have felt right. He had enjoyed being with Concetta. She had been the first woman that had made him feel wanted and desired, the first woman to show him just how pleasurable being with him was for her. But he’d got used to sleeping alone a long time ago. He knew he would only toss and turn and probably disturb her in her sleep. Concetta had wanted more from him, for them. She had made her intentions known right from the beginning, now that he came to think about it. He had been willing to say yes the last time their paths had crossed, but Concetta had seen right through it. She was an intelligent woman. She wasn’t going to be with someone if their heart already belonged to someone else. He’d never know what sharing a bed for more than an hour or so with Concetta would feel like because she had parted ways with him when she’d realized he had fallen for another woman the way he’d never fallen for her.

 

And now he was with her, the woman he was desperately, hopelessly in love with. She had told him they didn’t have to answer to anyone but themselves as long as they were together. That they could do whatever they pleased as long as they both were comfortable with it. No schedules, no obligations. No one to voice their unsolicited opinion, no one to judge. That was the way she experienced life and things: she didn’t let anyone tell her what to do or how to be. It was just them there in London- the rest of the city could have been empty for all it mattered. She certainly made him feel as if everything that mattered in the world was happening right then, right there, in that bed.

 

It felt so natural, being with her. She made everything seem easy. She made him feel free. He had never felt that way before.

 

His relationship with Phryne was full of first times. They had eaten breakfast food in the middle of the afternoon- he wasn’t sure he had ever eaten anything in bed before, not even as a child, let alone tea and toasts and scones mere hours before dinner time. He had rested his back against the headboard and she had sat in the V of his legs, facing him, the silver tray balancing on her delicate thighs. They had talked a little about her parents’ reunion, and then she had asked about Russia and the european cities he had shortly visited in between train trips. He hadn’t really seen much, he had been desperate to get to London as soon as possible, but he had a couple of stories to share and she’d listened to them all with interest and delight. He loved the attention she gave to his every word, like she was enamoured with his voice.

 

He loved her all the time, all of her.

 

She had let the tray on the floor when they had finished and in a matter of a minutes they had been cuddling in the center of the bed again, noses touching, her hands caressing his head gently as he traced patterns with his thumbs on her back and the sides of her ribs while they talked in whispers. And then she had tugged on his lower lip with her teeth, and her tongue had seeked entrance to his mouth, and then all conversation was forgotten and the only sounds that could be heard were soft moans drowned out by the other’s mouth.

 

He was laying on top of her now, carefully trying not to crush her under the weight of his body. They had only kissed and touched each other lightly so far. He could tell she wanted to let things flow slow and naturally. She had excused herself for a moment to go to the bathroom while he had been drinking his second cup of tea. He’d guessed she had gone to place that contraception device she always spoke so highly of, but that she had chosen not to tell him she was going to do so because she had no intention of making him feel pressured or rushed. He supposed that she had thought better to be ready in case things progressed to the point the diaphragm would be needed so she wouldn't have to get up in the throes of passion to take care of that.

He ached to be with her. He was itchy with desire. But he still was exhausted. Quality sleep and food had patched him up a little, but he wasn't at his best yet. And he could feel just how exhausted she was, too. How physically and emotionally worn out the whole ordeal with her family had left her. While they had been sipping their tea, she had implied she hadn’t been sleeping or eating properly either, and that that had been due to the anxiety and stress caused by family matters. He knew very well that Phryne had left England in the first place because she wanted to make sure Murdoch Foyle rotted in prison, but he also suspected she had chosen to stay in Melbourne because she wanted to get away from her parents- something that was probably difficult even if she had decided not to stay under their roof. He wondered what she’d have done if he hadn’t sent that first telegram letting her know he was going after her. Would she have stayed in London? Would she have pushed his father off the plane as soon as it landed and then immediately take off again to return home? He hadn’t made up his mind about what the answer to that question would be in the weeks of traveling he had spent pondering it.

 

But he supposed it didn’t matter now, did it? She was there, under him, all around him, heavily breathing as their kisses became more and more passionate. She was rubbing herself against him tentatively, invitingly. It was slow and it drove him crazy and he was responding by erratically swirling his tongue inside her mouth in rhythm with the movements of her hips. Every time she gently rubbed her core against his groin, he stopped breathing altogether. She was an assault on all his senses- the only thing he could taste, feel, smell, hear and see was her. They still had their pajamas on, feeling each other through their clothes the boldest thing they’d done so far, and he already felt like he was losing his mind. He couldn’t say he was surprised, though. He always knew she’d be the death of him, he had come to accept that a long time ago.

 

He cupped her face in his hands, looked right into those blue eyes that he adored, and told her so.

 

“You will be the death of me”

 

“We’ll go together then, inspector”. She tugged at his lips with her teeth again as she undid the first button of his pajama shirt. She was looking at him as if she were asking for permission to undo the rest. He delicately traced her arms with his fingertips, and she understood that she could go on. “Like Antony and Cleopatra, we’ll go together”.

 

When she undid the last button she pushed the shirt off his shoulders and caressed his bare chest and back. Her hands felt like heaven. A woman that could make him come undone with her touch couldn’t be earthly.

 

“You are beautiful, Jack Robinson” she whispered. She kissed the length of his nose, and then his lips, and then his jaw. And he was defenseless and completely bent at her mercy. She could have asked for the moon and he would have said yes.

 

He sat on his knees, one leg at each side of her body. He looked down at her, the woman that had turned his world upside down. He felt lightheaded. Laying there, with her hair and clothes a little bit disheveled, her lips red and swollen because of his kisses, and her alabaster skin hot and flushed, she looked so exquisite he couldn’t believe she was real. He must have dreamed her up. She had to be a figment of his imagination, a fantasy. He had gone mad with loneliness and dreamed this goddess up.

 

She reached out her arm and ran a hand through his hair.

 

“Penny for your thoughts?”

 

He held her arm and kissed the inside of her wrist.

 

“You are exquisite”. He flicked his tongue against her pulse point and he heard her suck in a breath. “You just cannot be real. I must be dreaming you”.

 

She sat up and took off the pajama top as she did so. She was naked underneath, he had already known that- he had felt her breasts through the fabric when they had been kissing moments before. He suspected she had also taken off her underwear when she had gone to the bathroom, so right now there only was a single piece of clothing on her otherwise naked body.

 

“I'm very much real. And I'm very much here”. She supported her weight on her knees and placed her hands on his shoulders, and then she straddled him, and he forgot how to breathe and what he was called and everything stopped existing except for her. “And so are you. Real and here and mine”

 

“Yours” he whispered, cupping her breasts with his hands and caressing them with his thumbs. “That I am”

 

“Mine to care for” she reminded him.

 

They finished undressing each other between kisses and soft laughter. And then they fell on the bed again, and hands and mouths were everywhere and nowhere at the same time. They were just fooling around, this was just foreplay, and yet she had him completely intoxicated. And neither one could catch their breath or control their reaction to what the other did to them. When he ran his index finger along her damped sex she whimpered and scratched his back. She surely left a mark, but he didn't care. Then when she started rubbing against his hip and he felt his skin wet with her arousal he sucked on the breast he had been gently tending to with maybe too much force- there would be a mark there in the morning too, but it didn't seem to bother her.

 

She was everything he had imagined and at the same time she wasn't like anything he had imagined. There were moments in which she sounded and tasted and moved and felt exactly like in his dreams. But then a moan, or a swirl of her tongue on the skin of his throat, or the bittersweet smell of her sweat would hit him with the realization that she was so out of this world he’d never be able to make the Phryne Fisher in his head a worthy match to the real one. She was better and sweeter and more beautiful and addictive than he could have ever thought.

 

She had him shivering with anticipation, and he wondered if she knew how much like torture it was every time she teased him by rubbing her sex against the length of his but withdrawing and humping his hip bone before he could sink into her. He was certain that she did know, and that she was doing it on purpose, and that maybe she wanted to find out if he'd beg her. He wasn't that sure that he wouldn't soon if she didn't stop it.

 

But then he realized she wasn't teasing him as much as she was impatiently waiting for him to take the lead. She was the one silently begging, offering herself to him and hoping he would be ready for what came next. They were naked, he was on top of her, his cock and thigh and hip bone were sticky with traces of her arousal, and she still didn't want to rush him into anything he may not be ready for. She was letting him have all the control over the situation because she didn't want to step on any boundaries he may have.

 

He loved her. Oh how deeply he loved her.

 

He kissed her on the mouth and circled her entrance with his thumb once more. She lifted her hips off the mattress involuntarily. He did it again, and she bit him on the shoulder. He did it a third time. He was building her up slowly and it both mesmerized and killed him just how utterly beautiful she looked with her legs spread for him, her eyes closed, her whole being lit on fire by the ministrations of his fingers.

 

“Don't make me come, though” she asked him breathlessly, gently pushing his hand away. “Not like that. Your fingers are lovely, but I want you inside of me the first time”.

 

He swallowed hard. His mouth was dry all of a sudden, his throat tightened. He wanted to make sure that she climaxed at least once, and he didn’t know how long he’d last once buried deep inside her, how long he’d be able to move within her without losing control and exploding. He dreaded thinking of disappointing her. He couldn’t bear the idea of not being enough.

 

Her voice lured him out of this thoughts.

 

“It doesn’t have to be gaudy, the first night” she said, caressing his neck, his shoulders, his chest. "There’ll be other nights that will be gaudy”. She nuzzled his nose with hers. “Many nights that will be gaudy”. She rocked her core against his sex again. “But tonight I just want you inside me” she whispered, still rocking slowly. “That will never not be enough”. It would never cease to amaze him just how well she could read him. “You are always more than enough for me, Jack. You make hungry where most you satisfy”

 

Her quoting Shakespeare was the last intelligible sound he heard before he lost himself in her. Then it was just moans and gasps for breath and nonsense, beautiful nonsense. Being with her, moving within her, feeling her heels at the sides of his back, it was consuming, it was pure bliss, it was madness. The way she cried out his name every time he thrusted sounded like nothing he’d ever heard- it was the most beautiful sound in the world. Every movement, every whisper, every scratch was the most exquisite sensation his senses had ever experienced. She couldn’t be more perfect, she couldn’t drive him any crazier.

 

The steady rhythm they had begun with was soon forgotten and became completely erratic as they ached for release. He placed a hand in between them to touch her and help her along, and as soon as he felt her tense and relax around him with his name on her lips he allowed himself to let go.

 

Neither of them moved afterwards. Their foreheads were pressed together and she had her arms around him and he was still caressing her sex softly. He was inside her, and by the way she was holding him down to her he guessed she didn’t want him anywhere else but there. He didn’t want to be anywhere either. He wanted to die right then, right there, Phryne Fisher spent in his arms, her teeth tugging at his lower lip while she tried to catch her breath after he’d made love to her.

 

He was about to withdraw his hand when he felt her tense again- he read it as a sign that he could make her climax again if he kept going, so he did, and this time he payed attention to every single detail. She had her eyes closed and her breathing was elaborated once more, but she was practically silent this time, her moans barely audible. She only called his name once right before it happened.

 

She opened her eyes and kissed his jaw.

 

“I’m so glad you came” she said.

 

“I think you came, too”

 

They both laughed softly.

 

“Very clever, detective inspector”.

 

He got off her and he could have sworn the expression on her face changed the moment he did, as if she suddenly felt empty. Or maybe he was imagining things. He didn’t care either way. He still wasn’t entirely sure he wasn’t imagining all of her in the first place.

 

They laid on their sides facing the other. She tucked a leg in between his. He ran his fingertips along the length of her spine. Their faces were so close he could have counted his freckles again if he’d wanted to.

 

“Tell me something about you I don’t know”. The question took him by surprise, something he was getting used to with her because she was always saying or doing things that surprised him.

 

He allowed himself a moment to ponder what she was asking. There were many things that she didn’t know about him, just like he supposed there were even more things he didn’t know about her. He could tell her he had a twin sister, he didn’t recall ever mentioning that. He could tell her he had quit smoking ten years ago. He could tell her he liked a bowl of soup and brown rice better than almost every meal because it reminded him of his grandmother. But he sensed she was expecting him to trust her with something more intimate after what they had just shared. It wasn’t like his sister and grandmother weren’t important, it wasn’t like he didn’t want to talk to her about his past and his family. But after what had happened he supposed she was fishing for other kind of information, maybe more insight on how he was feeling.

 

He decided to tease her a little and answer her question with something insignificant first.

 

“I snore”

 

“I already knew that” she said. “I took a nap with you”

 

He felt self-conscious all of a sudden.

 

“Did it bother you?”

 

“Not at all. I think your snores are rather lovely” she kissed the tip of his nose. “Actually, the sound lulled me back to sleep”.

 

He hoped she hadn’t realized he’d been holding his breath. Or that for the millionth time he was thinking of how incredibly beautiful and perfect she was.

 

“Now tell me something about you I actually don’t know” she asked again.

 

“When we saw that shooting star after the Collins wedding, I wished for your happiness. I want you to be happy more than anything in the world”.

 

They were laying in the darkness but he could have sworn he saw her blinking away tears.

 

“I believe it’s your turn now” he said, rapidly changing the focus of the conversation. “Tell me something about you I don’t know”

 

“This was the first time that it actually meant something to me… here” she took his hand in hers and placed it on her chest, where he could feel the beat of her heart.

 

And then he was the one blinking away the tears.

 

He couldn't believe how incredible she was. He must have dreamed her up. A woman that made him feel like that couldn't be earthly. He didn't care. She was there, and so was he. Real and hers. Always hers.


	11. Chapter 11

**CLEOPATRA.** I laughed him out of patience, and that night I laughed him into patience. And next morn, ere the ninth hour, I drunk him to his bed.

 

_Antony and Cleopatra (2.5.19-21)_

 

Sex without condoms was a mess. She wasn't used to such an activity. She always insisted that her sexual partners wore one, or else they got kicked out of the boudoir. Precautions were non negotiable, that was something she took pride on. But- and this was something she had never admitted to anyone- she also preferred that the men she slept with wore condoms because the only times she had had sex without them had been when René had forced himself on her, drunk either with alcohol or jealousy, or both. Once that relationship had ended she had decided she would always be in control of her body and that no one else would have a say about it. She didn't want to risk falling pregnant or catching a disease, and (she was sure she'd never admitted this to anyone either) such intimate skin to skin contact- and it didn't matter how much she enjoyed sex- reminded him too strongly of the abuse she had been through when younger.

 

With Jack she had felt safe and in control long before they had made it to the bed. She trusted him completely and felt connected to him on an emotional level that was beyond anything she had shared with anyone. She hadn't been careless- she had inserted the diaphragm before becoming too aroused- but she hadn’t thought of interrupting their foreplay to ask him to wear a condom as extra means for protection. She had made that decision consciously. She had wanted to be as close to him as possible. And she hadn’t thought of it as giving up control or letting another person decide for her, no. She knew he would have worn a condom if she’d asked him to, she just hadn’t wanted to ask. She hadn’t seen it as a weakness, either. For her, it was a big step towards fully trusting a man again. Besides, it wasn’t as if she could get a disease from Jack. The worst thing she could get from him was monogamy, and she was starting to suspect she’d gotten that already, and it hadn’t been sexually transmitted.

 

They had made love a second time before falling asleep. It had been slow and it had left them both breathless and speechless. She had curled on top of him afterwards, one leg at each side of his body, her face buried in the crook of his neck.

 

“I think you are mistaking me for the mattress, Ms. Fisher” he had teased her.

 

“I don't want to sleep on the wet spot” she’d lifted her head and looked up at him, pouting seductively. “Can I sleep on you?”

 

“Don't worry, we can switch places. I'll sleep on the wet spot” he'd teased her further.

 

She'd laughed and kissed him and not said a single word. She hadn't moved, either. Maybe she’d even held onto him a little tighter. It wasn't like her to be this attached, but then it wasn't like her to be this in love.

 

She had been about to doze off when she'd heard him ask:

 

“You'll wake me if my snoring bothers you, right?”

 

She’d chuckled.

 

“And miss the chance of watching you sleep? You funny man”

 

They had talked some more, and then she'd fallen into a very welcome deep slumber.

 

She woke before dawn to the sound of heavy rain hitting the city. It had been raining for days, and it'd probably start snowing soon. Winter was definitely approaching. Her birthday was in less than ten days, Christmas was a week and a half away, and thoughts of Janey were as heavy in her mind as the pouring rain. But at least Jack was there, would be there to spend those days with her. And they’d ring the New Year together, too. He’d be her midnight kiss- he was many things to her already, but now he'd be that too.

 

She got up, careful not to wake him. She found his pajama shirt discarded at the foot of the bed and put it on. It smelled like him. She noticed a lot of things about him were becoming her favorite things. Like his pajama and his smell and his snores… Oh she was so doomed! She was in too deep. But she didn't mind as much as she should have. She was changing. Love was reshaping her. She was discovering herself anew. She was healing. He was healing her. Every part that was broken within her and that she'd be holding together with hard work and strength, every raw, oozing wound had begun to heal the day he had walked into Lydia Andrews’ bathroom and found her kneeling over a dead body, trespassing on a police crime scene. From then on, it had been pedal down, eyes closed.

 

She tiptoed her way to the bathroom, splashed warm water on her face, and then tiptoed her way back. She took a moment to look at him. He was still naked, bare chest exposed, the cover pooling around his waist. He was laying on his back, fast asleep- the weight of her body on top of his all night hadn’t left him move an inch. She crawled onto the bed cat-like, on all fours, and climbed on top of him. She pressed her core against his groin and started rocking gently, only the cover between them. She’d probably stain it if she became too aroused, but she didn’t mind. She wanted to rock against him until he woke and they made love, or until she made herself come, whatever happened first.

 

He opened his eyes at the feel of her movements and the sound of a gasp she didn’t try to hold in. She was pleased to see his body’s immediate response to her straddling him and rubbing against him. They were looking at each other with intensity but neither said a word. She was burning with lust and desire and passion, and he was watching her with a mixture of adoration and hunger that sent shivers down her spine. They didn’t say anything because it simply wasn’t needed. They were learning to communicate with their body language only. He understood right away that she didn’t want to talk, she wanted to feel. So they just felt. The touches were no longer light and the rhythm was urgent and the thrusts were erratic and it was all oh so exquisite. She felt so full of life, so full of _him_ … His hands holding her waist as she rode him, her mouth on his breasts, his cock hitting her in all the right places, her hands on his chest for support. That early in the morning it was all the communication they needed. Wordless, row, hungry, physical communication in the form of wonderful, blissful sex.

 

She pressed her forehead against his and scratched his shoulders as she climaxed, and then collapsed on top of him as she felt him come inside her. She was still wearing his pajama shirt but it was unbuttoned, so the sensitive flesh of her breasts and stomach were in direct contact with his skin. The sensation made her shiver.

 

“Morning, Ms. Fisher” he said, breathlessly.

 

“Morning, detective inspector”

 

Her heart was beating so fast it was hurting her ribs, but it was a delicious ache. She nuzzled his neck and caressed his chest in the places where she had passionately scratched him moments before. His heart was out of control, too. She laid her head on his chest so she could listen to it.

 

“Your heart is making quite the scandal, inspector” she said.

 

“So is yours, I believe”. He kissed her forehead.

 

“Tell me something about you I don’t know”. She was repeating the same question she had asked him after the first two times they had made love. She liked the idea of learning something new about each other, she wanted to discover things about him and help him discover her as well. The aftermath of their lovemaking seemed like the perfect moment. He had already told her that he wanted her to be happy more than anything in the world and that when he had seen her in the platform at King's Cross wearing the scarf he’d given her he’d thought she’d never looked more beautiful. In exchange, she had told him sex had never meant so much for her with anyone else and that she’d not wanted to be with anyone but him since she’d left Melbourne.

 

“You look exquisite with only my pajama shirt on”

 

“That is something about me, you silly man”

 

“I know, I just wanted to tell you that while I still can breathe”. She laughed softly and kissed the top of his nose. “Well, let’s see. You know how I like reading poetry and plays and novels?”. She nodded her head. “I used to like to write them, too. Before the war. And after the war, I stopped writing. I just didn’t feel like it anymore”. She looked at him understandingly. “A lot of the things I enjoyed greatly before the war didn’t have the same appeal to me after I came back. The same must have happened to a lot of men, I suppose. So I read a lot instead”. He smiled and kissed her on the forehead, “Now tell me something about you I don’t know”.

 

Phryne suspected there was more to what he had just told her, that that was just half the story, but she decided not to push him. If that was what he felt comfortable telling her about his writing for now, then she would respect that. They had a lot of time on their hands to talk about their past and their feelings and things that had happened to them. So if she was right and there was more to it, he would tell her the rest when he decided he wanted to. She was in no hurry.

 

“I liked to draw and stopped doing so some time after the war had ended”. It was the only way she could phrase that sentence in a way that the statement was still true but it didn’t refer to René directly. She hadn’t stopped drawing because of the war- in fact, she had started drawing during the war and had kept on drawing afterwards. She had stopped because of René, because it reminded her of him and the hell he’d put her through. But she didn’t feel like talking about it in great detail, so she hoped Jack would understand what she was implying without her having to spell it for him.

 

He kissed her softly. He understood.

 

“I’m sorry I woke you up. You must be so very tired still. But I couldn’t help myself” she apologised, changing the subject.

 

“You can wake me up like that whenever you want. I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed an early morning so much in my life”.

 

“Oh, the wonders of morning sex” she sighed. She got off him and laid by his side on her back, completely naked except for the unbuttoned pajama shirt. He rolled over and got himself on top of her, his mouth on her breasts. She rubbed his head gently. She could get used to this, staying in bed all day and just being lazy with Jack. “Your mouth right there feels like heaven” she gasped, arching her back and involuntarily thrusting her hips against him.

 

“I was going to ask you out on a picnic today” he said, placing soft kisses on her collarbone. “But it doesn’t seem like it’ll stop raining, does it?”

 

“A picnic? That sounds rather lovely, detective inspector”.

 

“I thought it could be fun. Maybe some other day”.

 

“I’m not leaving this bed or putting on clothes anytime soon” she announced. “At least not today and not as long as it keeps on raining. And not as long as I have you here with me”.

 

“Neither am I, Ms. Fisher”

 

“Good to know” she nuzzled his shoulder. “We can make love all day like Antony and Cleopatra” she said seductively, a hand caressing his stomach and going slightly south.

 

“I have been told I resemble Cleopatra”. He made her laugh. God how she loved the way he looked at her when she laughed!

 

“You look more like an Antony to me” she climbed back on top of him. She cupped his face in her hand and began kissing his jaw, his neck, his shoulders, as she whispered “The pillar of my world”.

 

“I am a little like him, I think. I am a fool for the woman I love”

 

He captured her lips with his in a searing kiss.

 

“Good to know”. She sank into him slowly and closed her eyes at a wave of pleasure that overtook her. “I understand that she is a fool for you”.

 

He buried his face in her chest as she started to move following a steady rhythm. They would spend all day like this, there was no doubt. She would make love to him until he was so tired he couldn't hold a single thought in his mind, until he begged her to stop such sweet torture.

 

They made love a second time that morning, and then a third. They made love until they lost track of time and space. And she thought again that sex without a condom was really messy, but she didn't mind, and he didn't seem to care too much for the stains on the sheets, either, so they were good. He gave her all the feelings at the same time, it was wild and ridiculous and oh so crazy. It was madness. And, unlike any other man she'd ever known, he was drunk with nothing more than pure, sincere adoration for her. She made him drunk with love. And he wanted her happiness more than anything in the world. And she had called him the pillar of her world. And they were both real and breathing and moaning and tangled in each other, and she didn't feel trapped at all. And he would never try to trap her.

 

When she melted around him a fourth time, he rocked her back and forth until her orgasm subsided. She was still panting when he asked:

 

“Tell me something about you I don't know”

 

She gave him her answer without even thinking what she was saying:

 

“You are healing me".

 


	12. Chapter 12

**CAESAR.** Cowards die many times before their deaths. The valiant never taste of death but once. Of all the wonders that I yet have heard, it seems to me most strange that men should fear, seeing that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come.

 

_ Julius Caesar (2.2.32-37) _

 

She had never liked rainy weather. It made her sad and depressed and it reminded her of things she’d rather forget. Sunny days were not exactly better- her daughter had gone missing on a sunny day. She supposed that after the loss of a child there weren’t any good days left- some days just were a little bit more tolerable than others, and that was it. At least that was how Margaret Fisher felt. 

 

Life hadn’t been easy for them, there was no doubt about it. They had money now, but money wouldn’t bring her daughter back or make up for the terrible childhood her eldest daughter still remembered and resented them for. Luxury and comfort couldn’t wash away the memories of an alcoholic, careless father. They could eat whatever they wanted and wherever they wanted now, but that didn’t erase the nights they’d all gone to bed with empty stomachs. Her daughters had not always had food on their plates, they had been cold in the winters, they had never had clothes that weren’t second handed and practically worn out. And they hadn’t had a loving home, either. All the fighting, the yelling, the drinking, the swearing, her husband locking Phryne up in a cupboard every time she said something he didn’t agree with… A wealthy present could not make such horrible past go away.

 

She had loved her children, she had done her best to shield them from all of that, but apparently her best had not been good enough. Phryne had suffered, Janey had suffered. No wonder they used to leave the house to wander around Collingwood- if she could have escaped, she would have done it, too. But she had been cursed with the love she felt for her husband, and she couldn’t have left him, in the same way she simply couldn’t stood up to him for their children. That was something she was sure Phryne would never forgive: her cowardice. She should have been the one looking after Janey, not Phryne. But she had been at home fighting with Henry because he was out of a job again and was drinking his life away and she was finding it harder and harder to make ends meet. So her daughters had been all alone, sneaking around, unsupervised. She knew Phryne felt responsible for what had happened to Janey, but she had been just a child as well. It was not her job to look after her sister. Margaret would never forgive herself for failing Janet and Phryne.

 

Phryne, her beautiful Phryne. What an exquisite, strong woman she had grown into. She was so independent, so sure of herself, so loving and caring. Her drunken father hadn’t diminished her spirit. She had been strong in the face of her own adversity and now she sought justice for others. Just like she had sought justice for her Janey. Margaret was so proud of her, of everything she’d become. She had done it all by herself, money being only an accessory. Phryne had always been smart, resourceful and strong willed, she would have got out of Collingwood sooner or later, all by herself. And she had such a good heart, too. She had left everything behind, everything she loved and called her own, to fly her father to England so their marriage could have a last chance. Margaret knew neither of them deserved what Phryne had done, but she was so happy she’d done it.

 

She had refused to stay with them, choosing a suite at the Ritz instead. Margaret found this natural and thought it had to do with Phryne’s dark memories of life under the same roof as her parents. But then a telegram from someone called Jack Robinson had arrived. He was on his way to London and would be there soon to reunite with her, he said. Phryne had not wanted to answer her mother’s questions about who this gentleman was, but Henry had managed to shed some light on this for her. Apparently they were partners in Melbourne and they worked together solving crimes. He was a policeman. He looked at her with utter adoration, like she made the sun come up every morning. He was clearly in love with her, Henry had said. Desperately in love with her, he had added. And it seemed that Phryne had feelings for him, too. They had shared a farewell kiss before they’d left Australia. And now this man had come to England to visit her, which was another reason why her daughter had prefered to have her own suite at the Ritz instead of staying with them.

 

Margaret sighed and looked out the window. It was pouring. She supposed it’d start snowing soon. She wondered what her daughter was up to. She hadn’t seen her in almost a week, hadn’t spoken to her in three days. Had this Jack Robinson arrived at London already? Were they together? She hoped they were. She wanted her daughter to be happy, she deserved it. It wasn’t likely that she’d get to meet this Jack Robinson, although that didn’t stop her from wanting to. Henry had only met him by chance, and she was sure Phryne hadn’t been too thrilled about it. She didn’t want to ask more questions about this man because she knew it wasn’t her place to do so, but she wished her daughter would want to tell her about him and introduce him to her. 

 

“I have always hated this weather”

 

Her husband’s voice lured her out of her thoughts. They had been sitting in silence, sipping their tea. 

 

“I don’t like it either. It makes me sad”

 

Her children had never liked the rain. It meant they had to stay at home, they couldn’t run away. They didn't have proper winter clothes and their shoes had holes in them, they would have fallen terribly ill if they’d left the house on a rainy day. So they were forced to stay indoors and witness their parents’ fights. Margaret remembered Janey had been so scared of lightning and thunder, but Phryne had always known how to soothe her. She would sing to her as she rocked her back and forth, or tell her stories about fairies and little people that lived in the raindrops. Janey believed in all of those stories, of course. She believed in everything Phryne told her. The adoration they had had for each other, those two. She had never seen something quite like that.

 

Margaret sighed again. What a horrible thing, this London weather. The death weight she’d been carrying with her since her youngest daughter had been taken from them seemed to get even heavier this time of the year. 

 

“Phryne’s birthday is next week” Henry commented in passing. 

 

She was feeling so bitter she was about to tell him that he knew, that almost fifteen hours of labour were pretty hard to forget, that that horrible monster killing his baby because it was summer solstice was even harder to wipe off her mind. But she bit her tongue. She didn’t want to pick up a fight. Henry wasn’t doing anything to deserve it, he was just trying to make conversation.

 

Henry spoke again before she could say anything.

 

“I wonder if she’ll want to have dinner with us”

 

“We can ask her, but she must have made other plans already” Margaret said. 

 

That was something that made her sad, too. Phryne rarely spent any of her birthdays with them. They hadn’t had the money to throw her a birthday party or buy her birthday presents when she had been a child- they had barely had the money to feed her and her sister! Now that they did have the money they didn’t see her often. Margaret knew Phryne had her reasons, and she understood them. Birthdays were difficult for her since Janey had gone missing. She knew her daughter threw parties and danced the night away and probably drunk too much champagne, but she was sure that when it was all over and the guests were on their way home she cried herself to sleep like she had when she was a young girl that missed her sister desperately. Margaret was too aware of that feeling. She usually cried herself to sleep, too, almost every night. She had done so long before Janey had been taken, but crying until she felt she couldn’t breathe anymore was a constant in her life after the loss of her daughter. 

 

“Maybe she could visit us on the weekend, we could do lunch” Henry said.

 

“That would be nice” Margaret replied automatically. Her thoughts were far away from her husband and their sitting room and their home and their life in London. They were back in Australia, in Collingwood, several years ago. It felt like a lifetime had passed and at the same time it still hurt as if her daughter had been ripped from them only a day or so ago. She had died the day Janey had disappeared, and then on each day that followed she died a little more. It was like dying a thousand times, outliving a child. 

 

She had been happy as a little girl, she remembered. She had been happy when she had fallen in love with Henry, too. He had swept her off her feet. He was so dashing back then- he still was, she supposed. After everything they’ve been through, all the drinking and the fighting and losing Janey, she could still see parts of the man that had waltzed with her in the Grand Hotel. She had been happy when Phryne and Janey had been born, of course. But then everything had fallen apart. She hadn’t been brave enough to face her husband, she had been too preoccupied with him to care properly for her daughters. She had been such a fool. How could she be happy again after the horror and the monstrosity that had happened to her Janey? Murdoch Foyle had murdered her daughter once. Knowing her baby was six feet underground murdered her every single day. She woke up every morning knowing that she’d go through the excruciating pain of being the mother of a murdered child. She wasn’t brave enough to put an end to that suffering, either. She had always been a coward. She wasn’t like Phryne, brave and strong and unique. She was an ordinary woman with a suffering so great she couldn’t understand how her heart hadn’t actually broken into pieces. It certainly felt broken to her.

 

“Drinks after dinner could do, too” Henry kept on talking. 

 

“If she can make it”

 

“I hope she brings that detective with her. You’ll approve of him. Looks at her like she is the bloody moon”

 

“Maybe she is that to him. She is even more beautiful than the moon to me”

 

Phryne was her moon and Jane had been her sun. What a cold, dark life it was without her baby girl. Jane had been Phryne's sun, too. She hoped the life of her eldest daughter didn't feel as dark and cold. She hoped Phryne had found the light. She shone bright and warm for others, but she deserved to have someone that shone bright and warm for her.

 

Margaret took another sip of her tea. It was still raining. Henry excused himself= she did not quite hear where he was going or why, not that she cared. 

 

“I hope you shine like the sun for my daughter, Jack Robinson” she whispered to herself. “And I hope you adore her as if she were the moon”. 

  
Something told her that he did.


	13. Chapter 13

**PROSPERO.** The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples, the great globe itself— yea, all which it inherit—shall dissolve, and like this insubstantial pageant faded, leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.

 

_The Tempest (4.1.142-48)_

  


They were walking hand in hand down Oxford Street. The sun was still hidden behind grey clouds and it was cold and windy- the scarf he’d given her was around her neck-, but at least it wasn’t raining anymore. He loved this, the feel of her fingers entwined with his. They had sometimes walked arm in arm when they’d been just partners and it had sent shivers down his spine then, but walking hand in hand felt much more intimate. It was special because he’d never seen her do it with anyone but him. He’d seen her walk arm in arm with other men, but he had never seen her hold their hand. Sometimes she absentmindedly rubbed the back of his hand with her thumb, and he just melted. He came undone every time her skin brushed against his. What love did to some grown men! It was madness.

 

“Look how beautiful they are” she commented as they stopped at the main entrance of a big high end department store. She was referring to the window displays. Jack had never seen anything like it. “I’ve always loved Selfridges. Such a modern, open minded, revolutionary business. And food at the Palm Court Restaurant is to die for!” She smiled at him. “Shall we go in, inspector?”

 

She was showing him around London now that the weather called for more than staying in bed all day making love. He wanted to know her favorite bookshops, her favorite cafés, her favorite dance halls, her favorite everything. He loved seeing things through her eyes. Things looked, tasted and sounded different when he shared them with her. He’d follow her anywhere, his crossing an ocean because she’d asked him was proof of how true that was. He felt at home everywhere with her. She made interesting and amusing things he would have not stopped to look at twice otherwise. Her witty remarks and her comments, the stories and anecdotes she had to share, her thoughts and opinions- he could listen to her talk for hours. He was positive she felt the same way- she had taken him to look at coins for his collection, and it had been fun for both of them. He had talked and she had listened with an expression on her face that he could have sworn meant nothing but adoration. He didn't remember a time in his life where he'd enjoyed even the littlest things. Tea and biscuits and boutiques and the English accent, he’d name them all the eighth wonder if it were up to him. She had that power over him, over his world: ordinary things became extraordinary when shared with her.

 

They were looking at some brooches when he decided to bring up a subject they’d both been actively avoiding. He didn’t want to make her uncomfortable or have her thinking he didn’t respect whatever feelings she had on the matter, but a certain event was approaching and he needed to know what she wanted to do about it. He didn’t want to make any assumptions that could lead to him making a mistake and ruining the day for her. He would go with what she decided, whether it was making a big fuss about it or ignoring it completely.

“This one is very nice” he pointed at a beautiful silver brooch that was shaped like an orchid.

 

“Yes. it’s lovely. I’ve got a similar one back at home”.

 

He took a deep breath and let the words out.

 

“So I guess it wouldn’t be a good birthday present, then. If you already have a similar one” he was trying to sound casual.

 

“I don’t want any presents, Jack”. She wasn’t looking at him, she appeared to be very concentrated examining another brooch. “I don’t need any, either. You’re here with me, that’s more than enough. I already told you, you’ll always be more than enough”.

 

She was saying all that as if she was commenting on the weather, as if the words didn’t hold so much meaning that he felt his heart skip a beat. She was telling him he was everything she needed, that he’d always be more than enough. What a dangerous thing love was, you could come undone so easily at any time when you were lost in it. How he wished they weren’t in public so he could kiss her senseless and ask her to repeat those words to him over and over again. She had said them before when they had been making love, but he would never tire of hearing them.

 

“But I want to get you something. That is, if you agree with that. With me getting you something for your birthday, I mean”. He totally sounded like a nervous schoolboy talking to his first crush. He really didn’t care. He had stopped being careful with what love was doing to him the moment he had bought the first of the several tickets he’d had to buy to get to London.

 

“I want to spend the day with you”. She looked at him and they smiled at each other. She lowered her voice until it was a whisper. “And then I want to spend the night with you as well”.

 

“So, you don’t want to do anything different from what we’ve been doing”. It was more a statement than it was a question.

 

He didn’t know how to express what he was feeling and thinking, but luckily for him she seemed to be able to read his mind. He wasn’t so sure it was just a figure of speech- sometimes he was positive she did actually have mindreading abilities.

 

“Jack, if you’re worried I’m not throwing one of my famous big parties just because you’re here, let me tell you that it’s been a long time since I’ve let anyone stop me from doing what I want. I’m not throwing a birthday party because I don’t desire to do so. I want to spend the day with you, maybe go to a dance hall if we’re up to it- if I feel like going and you don’t want to join me, it’s fine, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want either, I can go by myself. And that’s it. If I wanted to do any different I would tell you and I would do it, you know how I am”.

 

He smiled at her. He was fighting the urge he felt to kiss her right there and then. Selfridges & Co. was a modern, open minded shop, she had told him, but he wouldn’t dare being so bold and kissing her in a public place. He could tell she wanted to kiss him, too, but that she was restraining herself to do so because she wouldn’t want him to feel uncomfortable.

 

“There is one thing I am yet to decide if I want to do, though” she said. “When I spoke to my mother on the phone yesterday she asked me if we would like to have dinner with her and my father. She said that since she supposed I already had plans, we could do it the day after my birthday. You have no obligation to come with me if I decide to go”.

 

“If that were the case, if you decided to accept the invitation, would you want me to go with you?” he asked.

 

“It really is up to you, Jack”.

 

“I would go anywhere for you, Phryne. You have to know that by now”

 

She quickly stood on her tiptoes and gave him a peck on the lips.

 

“I’ll have to think about what I want to do, then” she said. “It’s been a long time since I had a birthday dinner with my parents. I don’t care about seeing my father at all- I’ve seen enough of him during our trip here to last me a lifetime. But I do care about my mother”.

 

“I know you do”.

 

She smiled at him softly. She looked so fragile in that moment, so vulnerable, so child-like. He would never tell her that, of course, and it was an impression that lasted just a fraction of a second. He knew how hard all of this was, how her birthday had been resignified since they had learned why Foyle had chosen Janey. She hadn’t had much of a choice the previous year, she hadn’t been able to cancel the party at last minute. It had been something intimate and she had played the part so well, she had been radiant and full of life and energy and had shone brighter than the sun. But he understood her if this year she wanted something more quiet, he understood her wanting to humor her mother and have dinner at her parents’ house. He even understood her wanting to spend time with her mother, even if he suspected she would not openly admit that to anyone- maybe she wouldn’t even admit it to herself. And he would go with her, he would do whatever she wanted to do. It didn’t mean she wasn’t strong, it didn’t make her less… well, her. He hoped she knew that.

 

“I’ll think about it and I’ll let you and my mother know”. She cupped his face in one of her hands and gently caressed his cheek with her thumb. “You’re an extraordinary man, Jack Robinson. You are the best birthday gift I could have asked for”.

 

That did it for him. He forgot about propriety and public displays of affection being frowned upon and what the social standards called for regarding a couple’s behaviour when they were in a department store. He buried his hands in her raven black hair and pressed his lips to hers. It wasn’t a passionate kiss, he didn’t let it linger either. They broke away ten seconds later.

 

She was looking at him with a big smile on her face. She looked pleasantly surprised.

 

“It seems you took it to heart, inspector, when I said Selfridges & Co. was a modern, open minded business”.

 

He looked around the store.

 

“I think it suits us. We are a modern, open minded couple”.

 

She took his hand in hers again and they walked to the next departament. It was so big, they still had a lot of things to see.

 

“That we are”.

 

He kissed the top of her head and gently squeezed the hand she was holding his in. At that moment Jack Robinson felt nothing anyone could get him for Christmas or for his birthday would ever compare to the joy of hearing the Honourable Phryne Fisher agreeing to them being a couple. A modern, open minded one.


	14. Chapter 14

**BENEDICK.** I do love nothing in the world so well as you. Is not that strange?

 

_ Much Ado About Nothing (4.11.265-66) _

  
  


The night before her birthday they had sex on the bedroom floor. They had tried to make it to the bed with no such luck. In fact, they had been trying to make it out of the suite to have dinner at the hotel restaurant for a change when she had pinned him against the wall and gone down on him with aching desperation. She had put teeth and tongue to work until he was short of breath and grabbing onto her shoulders for support. She loved the sounds he made when she pleasured him like that, how all of his muscles tensed as she built him up. She knew by now how to tell when to sink onto him and have him come inside her. She craved that sensation all the time, and like a cocaine addicted she couldn’t wait for the next fix. He took her so high every time he buried himself deep in her she always experienced some sort of separation anxiety when he got off her. It was atypical of her, but it was definitely there. It had surprised her at first, but perhaps the most surprising thing was that it did not bother her. She had long ago stopped fighting her devotion for him, and had accepted that it was another of the oddities that made her who she was.

 

They had been making love on the floor for hours. It was now his turn to have her pinned down, his long fingers closed around her wrists, her legs closed around his hips. All of her senses were heightened, her whole body pulsating to the rhythm of his thrusts, her mind blank. It was always so intense, so exquisite. She was addicted to everything about having sex with him- his hands, his mouth, his skin covered in the cooling sweat that made her so drunk when she licked it, his worshipping caresses, the moans she elicited from him. The more she had of him, the more she wanted. 

 

“You make hungry where most you satisfy” 

 

She had whispered those words in his ear several times now. She wanted him to know he was more than enough, that he would always be more than enough. That right there and then she wanted him and him only, that no one else would do. Sometimes she would say that to him while rocking her hips gently against his, their eyes locked, their hands intertwined. Other times she would murmur them after the last waves of ecstasy washed over her. He never said anything, he just kissed her or held her close to him, and then after they caught their breath they would begin to play the game they’d adopted for the afterwards of their lovemaking:  _ tell me something about you I don’t know _ .

 

They stayed on the floor, neither of them finding necessary to move. He rolled them over and she ended up on top of him. She rested her head on his chest and for a moment she stood quiet as he drew circles on her back. A little cry of pleasure escaped her when he traced the line of her spine with his thumb. She shivered. 

 

“Are you cold?”

 

She nuzzled his neck.

 

“No, I’m fine. I could stay like this forever.” She confessed.

 

“So could I.” 

 

He kissed the tip of her nose, and then he traced the line of her jaw with more kisses. And then he kissed her all over her face because he knew that made her giggle. She loved that he knew that, and how he put that knowledge to use. She loved him. She hadn’t said those three words out loud yet and didn’t know when she would say them. She did not feel the need to. Such a powerful emotion was to be felt. He had to already know that she loved him, right? Saying it wouldn’t make it any more official, it wouldn’t make their relationship more unique or more special. Words wouldn’t change this wonderful thing they had. She supposed she would  _ eventually _ say something, but she didn’t know when that would happen and she wasn’t about to torture herself about her taking her time. 

 

His voice distracted her from her thoughts.

 

“Tell me something about you I don’t know” he asked.

 

She moved to a sitting position and straddled him. He sat up as well and put his arms around her waist. She was tempted to start rubbing against him, mess around a little until he got hard again. The clock on the wall read it was a quarter past eleven. She wished nothing but to start her birthday with Jack Robinson’s hands all over her and their bodies joined as one. 

 

“I like it when you make me giggle” she said, tugging at his lower lip with her teeth. He smiled, and she felt something melting within her that had nothing to do with sexual desire and anticipation. She loved his smile. “Tell me something about you I don’t know.”

 

“Do you remember that you told me not to get you a birthday present?” 

 

She nodded her head.

 

“All I want is you”. She kissed him on the nose. “No one else. Nothing else. Well, maybe a bottle of champagne and…”

 

He cut her off by kissing her fully on the mouth. 

 

“I know.” He rested his forehead against her and they locked eyes. 

 

“I have a feeling you got me something anyway.” She didn’t know when that could have happened- they hadn’t spent a minute apart since she had picked him up at the train station. Perhaps he had bought something for her on his way there; that was a possibility. Maybe he had got her something at Selfridges & Co. when they had gone shopping there the other day; after all, she had spent a fair amount of time admiring a beautiful collection of hats, and she couldn’t have testified under oath that she had not let him out of his sight. 

 

“I did not get you anything. I mean, I didn’t buy anything for you.”

 

She was puzzled. She had no idea what he was talking about, and she was intrigued.

 

“Please do tell me more, Inspector.”

 

“Not until tomorrow. The thing I told you about me that you did not know is that I have something to give you tomorrow for your birthday.”

 

Phryne looked at him with mockery indignation and slapped him softly on the arm.

 

“What was that for?” he asked, laughing.

 

“Did your mother not teach you it is not nice to be a teaser?”

 

“Oh, but teasing you is so much fun…”

 

She made him stop mid sentence by rocking against him. He was speechless all of a sudden, breathless. He couldn’t get enough of her either, and to her that was almost as pleasurable as sex itself.

 

She kept on rocking. He closed his eyes, willingly or not she did not care. She felt him tense and relax in rhythm with her movements. It was past half eleven. She would be a year older in a matter of half an hour. She couldn’t imagine a better way to start this day than in the arms of the person she was deeply, hopelessly in love with. 

 

“Yes, Inspector? You were saying?”

 

He lazily opened his eyes. 

 

“I forgot”

 

She let one of her hands wander south of his body and started to stroke him.

 

“You were saying something about teasing, I believe.”

 

“Oh, yes.” She couldn’t be sure if he was answering her question or if he was just moaning with pleasure. Maybe it was both. “I said teasing was fun.” She licked his throat, sucked on his Adam’s apple, bit on his shoulder. He was gasping for breath and she couldn’t believe just how much she wanted him. “But with you it feels more like torture sometimes…”

 

“Tell me what my present is and I’ll stop torturing you.”

 

She gently pushed him back to have him lay on the floor again. She nibbled on his neck, his chest, his navel, and then she licked his tights before taking him in her mouth.

 

“Very good interrogation techniques, Ms. Fisher,” he grabbed onto her hair and tugged a little on it. The first time he had done it while she had been performing oral sex on him, he had apologized. She had assured him it was fine and that she enjoyed it, so from then on he always tugged at her hair or scratched her shoulders and back slightly while her tongue swirled around his cock. “But I won’t talk” he added breathlessly.

 

She looked up at him.

 

“I’m sure I can still make you moan, though. Don’t you reckon?”

 

“That I reckon you can, Ms. Fisher.”

 

She put teeth and tongue to work again, and she didn’t stop until his moans filled her ears, until he was ready for her to sink onto him and have him come inside her. She wouldn’t have wanted to start her birthday in any other way or with any other person. She was having sex on the floor with a man she adored so much the feeling soothed her when with anyone else she would have been terrified. But there was nothing to be scared of. She felt so free and so wonderful and so full of life. And these amazing sensations were her doing as much as they were his. Loving someone- loving  _ him _ \- didn't mean imprisonment. He did not want to cut her wings, he didn't limit her, he didn't compromise her freedom. In fact, loving the right person-  _ him _ \- was perfectly compatible with her freedom. And she couldn't be happier to start a new year of her life pondering this realization as he pumped into her.

 

She looked at his eyes and kissed him as they slowly rocked together, and she whispered into his mouth:

 

“You complete me.”

 

And then she succumbed to the love he was making her feel all around her, inside of her, within her. It was amazingly beautiful, it was magic, it was a new form of freedom.

 

And she loved all of it as much as she loved him.

  
  
  



	15. Chapter 15

**MAECENAS.** She’s a most triumphant lady, if report be square to her.

 

 **ENOBARBUS.** When she first met Mark Antony, she pursed up his heart upon the river of Cydnus.

 

 **AGRIPPA.** There she appeared indeed, or my reporter devised well for her.

 

 **ENOBARBUS.** I will tell you. The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne, burned on the water. The poop was beaten gold, purple the sails, and so perfumèd that the winds were lovesick with them. The oars were silver, which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made the water which they beat to follow faster, as amorous of their strokes. For her own person, it beggared all description: she did lie in her pavilion—cloth-of-gold, of tissue— O’erpicturing that Venus where we see the fancy outwork nature. On each side her stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids, with divers-colored fans, whose wind did seem to glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool, and what they undid did.

 

 **AGRIPPA.** Oh, rare for Antony!

 

 **ENOBARBUS.** Her gentlewomen, like the Nereides, so many mermaids, tended her i’ th’ eyes, and made their bends adornings. At the helm a seeming mermaid steers. The silken tackle swell with the touches of those flower-soft hands that yarely frame the office. From the barge a strange invisible perfume hits the sense of the adjacent wharfs. The city cast her people out upon her, and Antony, enthroned i’ th’ marketplace, did sit alone, whistling to th’ air, which, but for vacancy, had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too and made a gap in nature.

 

 **AGRIPPA.** Rare Egyptian!

 

 **ENOBARBUS.** Upon her landing, Antony sent to her, invited her to supper. She replied it should be better he became her guest, which she entreated. Our courteous Antony, whom ne’er the word of “No” woman heard speak, being barbered ten times o’er, goes to the feast, and for his ordinary pays his heart for what his eyes eat only.

 

_Antony and Cleopatra (2.2.191-237)_

 

Detective Inspector Jack Robinson met the Honourable Phryne Fisher by chance on the morning Mr. Andrews was murdered by his wife. She had arrived from London that very same day, and mere hours after setting foot in Melbourne she had come into his life with the unpredictability, force and intensity of a natural disaster. What should have been a brief crossing of paths, an interesting anecdote for a frivolous aristocrat (and a very annoying one for him), morphed into a partnership with a naturality he had never experienced in a relationship, whether personal or professional, before. By the time he had realized what was happening, she had already become someone he could trust, a friend. It had taken a misunderstanding on his part about the identity of the victim in a crash for him to accept he had been in love with her all along. That wealthy, bohemian, modern-minded woman that had kept showing up at the crime scenes where he was working and imposing her wit and detecting skills until he accepted she was not going to get bored with the private investigation business and give up, that woman that was not the marrying kind and that shamelessly took as many lovers as she pleased, was the love of his life.

 

It was the kind of love that could be described as nothing but intoxicating. It was challenging and wonderful and frustrating and maddening. It had the particularity of giving him all the feelings a person could experience, and all of them at the same time. Everything he did, every one of his actions, all of them ended up transforming into echoes of his love for her. She had become a constant in his thoughts, and in his life, and he could not phantom the idea of her presence- both overwhelming and consuming- not driving him up a wall and reshaping his views of the world to better them, in equal parts. All of her- all of what he knew her to be- had haunted him in the flesh, and the imaginary version of all the things he had wished she was to him- his confident, his lover- had haunted his mind.

 

But he had never imagined how far this love would take him, both literally and figuratively. He'd never imagined he'd throw caution to the wind and take a ship and buy more train tickets than he could count on the fingers of one hand to meet with her at the other side of the world. He'd never imagined he'd ever know just how soft and warm her skin was, or what her arousal tasted like, or the exact expressions and sounds she made when  she came undone around him. When he had thought he was losing her to the rest of the world, she had dared him to redefine his comfort zone and invited him along on a journey of mutual discovery. And all of what he had never imagined would ever happen, happened. And reality was so different from his imagination, so much better, he did not have time to imagine anything anymore.

 

She had taken his heart, claimed it hers, and he had been given the freedom to finally unchain his love and experience it fully. She offered herself to him to worship and adore, he let her have the last of his sanity and do with it whatever she liked. He was all hers. And she wanted him, in a way that bewitched him into believing that e every time they touched the rest of the universe ceased to exist.

 

He had spent most of his trip to London writing about his feelings for her. It had been a long time since he had put pen to paper for something deeper and more meaningful than filling in police reports and case files. He had told her he had used to write before the war, and that ever since his return from the battlefield he had stopped doing it. He hadn't been completely honest with her: he had started writing again on the weeks it had taken him to get to London, to her warm embrace. He had missed talking to her so he had played pretend: what would he say to Phryne if she was there with him and he had no other weapon than his own words, no Shakespeare quotes to borrow? What he had say to her if he had her there and he had no fears? The ink had flowed more naturally than he would have thought, and soon he had written over twenty letters. They were for himself, he had decided. She would never read them or know about them. They were just a mechanism he had found to cope with how unbearable it was not to be able to talk to her.

 

He had never imagined he would give her the stack of letters, all thirty four of them, as a birthday present.

 

She had told him she didn’t want anything, but he still wanted to give her something for her birthday, although he did not exactly know what. He felt like anything he could actually afford to get her would never be enough to express how she made him feel, how crazy she drove him, how hard he had fallen for her. Besides, the truth was, she did not really need anything, and whatever she wanted she could afford with her own money. Clothes and jewelry and more luxuries than he had ever seen in the flesh, she could have them all. She could have absolutely anything, and yet all she wanted for her birthday was to spend the day with him, and nothing more. It had melted his heart to hear that coming from her. The look in her eyes, the way her lips had brushed against his when they had kissed at the store they had been visiting at the time, it had all made him come undone. And then, later that night while they had been making love, he had known there was something in the world that was completely his to give: those inner monologues he had written with her, and her only, as his muse and inspiration, those beautifully worded thoughts and feelings no one but her awoke in him.

 

The morning of her birthday was a cloudy one. Jack woke before her but didn’t get up immediately; he allowed himself to watch her sleep for a couple of minutes. He was in awe of her. He didn’t understand how a person could be so extraordinary, so exquisite. She was an unique, rare jewel, a Cleopatra of the modern times. And he, like Antony, hadn’t had other option but to surrender to her.

 

He got up carefully as to not disturb her, which proved rather difficult since she was nestled in his arms, her head on his shoulder, one of her arms across his bare chest. He put a large, fluffy pillow in the vacant space on the bed where his body had rested all night, and she curled around it and hugged it without waking up. He made sure she was still sleeping soundly before sneaking out of the bedroom and going into the suite living area. He found the stack of letters in his brown leather briefcase, where they had remained since he’d tied them up with red string the day before arriving at London, and then went back to the bedroom.

 

Jack kneeled on the floor by the bed and gently tucked a lock of hair the color of raven feathers behind her ear. She looked peaceful in her sleep; angel-like, even. They had fallen asleep a little before the break of dawn, exhausted by their lovemaking. He ached all over, but he didn’t mind. That kind of pain felt like bliss.

 

He leaned forward and nibbled softly on the tip of her nose.

 

“Happy birthday, Phryne” he whispered when she opened her eyes, clouded and darkened with sleep. Her face broke into a huge grin when she saw him. He had wished her a happy birthday several times after midnight the night before while they had been kissing and cuddling and slowly rocking against each other. He had adored how she had smiled at him every time he had said the words.

 

“Thank you” she whispered, running a hand through his hair and then tracing his jaw with her index finger. She propped up herself on the bed on one elbow, still sleepy. She tugged at his upper lip with her teeth. When she spoke, she did it in whispers, and he could tell she was trying really hard to keep her eyes open. She wasn’t fully awake yet. “Make love to me. Last night wasn’t enough, we fell asleep too early last night.” She nuzzled his face very cat-like as she said the words. “I want you all inside of me, all on top of me. Fuck me all.”

 

He dropped the stack of letters he had been holding in one hand on the carpeted floor. He climbed on top of her and pinned her to the bed, one arm at each side of her head. He would never tire of this, of her. He could make love to her a million times and it would always be different somehow. It never ceased to amaze him how many new little details he discovered that he hadn’t payed attention to about their lovemaking  before each time. She was the most intriguing, captivating, glorious creature in the whole world, nothing compared to the feel and taste of her.

 

“I can’t get enough of you inside me” she panted in his ear as their thrusts fell into a rhythm. “Fuck me all day, that’d make it a happy birthday.”

 

He stayed buried inside her for a couple of minutes after they were finished. He had learned quickly that she didn’t like it when he pulled off her right away. She had never said anything, but he had been able to tell by the way she hooked her legs around his back to try to pin him down to her, anxious to anchor him there. If he had had to put it into words, maybe he’d have described it as some sort of separation anxiety: he knew it first hand, he felt at loss for a few seconds every time he pulled off her. So by an implicit mutual agreement they always remained tangled and joined as one until they relaxed completely and their heartbeat rates returned to normal. They shared the softest, most intimate kisses in those moments, and he loved how content and safe she looked when he caressed her face as if he was trying to wordlessly assure her that he was there, that he was real, that he was hers.

 

“It's my favorite feeling in the world” she said. “You inside of me. And this,” she took his hand in hers, lifted it to her mouth and sucked on his open palm to make him moan “this is my favorite sound. You are my favorite everything.”

 

She rendered him speechless. He kissed her eyelids and all around her face, and he caressed her ribcage, soothing the red marks that were consequences of their passionate night with his fingers.

 

“I have something for you.”

 

He got off her and up, and looked for the stack of letters. He found it by the bed on the floor. She sat up propped up on her elbows and looked at him with curiosity. He sat on the bed next to her, and she eyed the envelopes tied together in a small package with red string, intrigue written all over her face.

 

“These are for you. I told you I used to write when I was younger and the war was yet to leave its marks on me. I stopped writing after the war, it's true, but somehow I found the will and the inspiration to start writing again when I was coming here, after you. You gave me back something I thought I had lost forever. During those lonely days out there in the sea, surrounded by foreign people, you became yet another extraordinary thing only you and no one else could be: a muse. My muse.”

 

Her eyes began watering and she was looking at him so adoringly he felt his heart stop. If he died right there and then, completely naked after making love to her, drowned in the pools that were her eyes, then he would go a happy man. To have her look at him like that was everything he needed, nothing more.

 

“You wrote these thinking of me?” Her voice was raw with emotion.

 

“Every single one of them. In every letter you'll find the things I would have liked to say to you when I was coming here but, for obvious reasons, couldn't. It's nonsense, really.” He didn't want her to expect the finest of writings- he wasn't Shakespeare after all, he was just an ordinary man that had fallen hopelessly in love with an extraordinary woman. “You don't have to read them now, or ever, if you don't want to.” He wanted her to know that it was alright if she didn't wish to find out what he had written about her, about them. “I just want you to have them.”

 

She ran the hand that wasn't holding the stack of letters through his face, and then she kissed him softly on the lips.

 

“An extraordinary gift from an extraordinary man” she whispered. “See what I always tell you? You make hungry where most you satisfy.”

 

She gently pushed him down on the bed to make him lie on his back and straddled him. She stretched her arm and put the letters in the drawer of the nightstand.

 

“I will read them all.” It sounded like a promise. He didn't need any promises from her, though. He had her there, naked and beautiful and glorious and looking down on him with something that was unmistakably deeper than any other feeling in the world. (He wouldn't dare naming it). It was enough, he needed nothing else. “But let me make love to you, fuck you senseless, first. Before you make love to me with your words.”

 

She sank into him and began rotating her hips very slowly.

 

“I'd like to think Cleopatra celebrated her birthday like this” she said, speeding up the pace.

 

“Don't,” he couldn't breathe, let alone speak, but he made an effort “don't compare yourself to her.” She had her eyes closed and she was biting her lower lip, she looked so concentrated on what she was doing to him with the rotation of her hips and the pressure she was putting on his pulsating cock that he wasn't sure she was listening, but he kept on talking anyway. “She wasn't real, was a work of fiction. You,” he gasped, he was going to come apart in a minute, he could feel it “you are real.”

 

She took one of his hands and brought it to where their bodies were joined so he could touch her and make her come on his fingers. A moan got mixed with her words:

 

“I'm real and here and yours.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Cleopatra referenced by Jack is the character as Shakespeare described her, not the Queen of the Nile that actually walked the Earth.


	16. Chapter 16

**LEAR**. I am a man more sinned against than sinning.

 

_King Lear (3.2.57-58)_

  


It was a rainy morning and the start of winter. He didn’t like winter weather, and he didn’t like this particular date either. It was a sharp reminder of his failure as a father: first he had been too drunk to give his newly born daughter the correct name he and his wife had intended for her, and then he had been too drunk to raise her in any way that wasn’t violent, and it was because of his alcoholism that he hadn’t cared that his children spent all day wandering about Collingwood like they were doing when that horrible monster took his youngest to fulfill some damn prophecy about summer solstice or whatever the reasons that that nature aberration had had for doing what he’d done.

 

He should have never become a father. His ineptitude and irresponsibility had costed the life of one of his daughter and ruined the other’s. He shouldn’t have had children. One daughter had been buried in a common pit for years until her earthly remains had been found, and the other resented him. He couldn’t blame her. He wished he had done things differently, but he wasn’t sure he’d do anything differently if he were given a second chance. It was in his nature: he was careless, selfish, egocentric. He liked alcohol and women too much for his own good, he gambled, he was a liar. There really wasn’t anything positive to say about him.

 

He didn’t understand why or how Margaret had put up with him for as long as she had. She had raised the girls alone, she had boiled soup from stones when they hadn’t had anything for dinner for a few nights in a row so they wouldn’t starve. She had stoically gone through the loss of their daughter. And all the while she had been dealing with his ways and not complaining because she loved him. He knew he didn’t deserve her, he never had. He was lucky he still had her, lucky that she had stuck with him for all those years, lucky she had waltzed with him at the Grand Hotel when she was young and beautiful and could have had any man she wanted. She had wanted _him_ , and he had ruined her life and the lives of the children she’d bore for him. And yet there she was that December morning, sleeping soundly on the side of the bed opposite to his. Sometimes a part of him wished she could see how much she was worth and that she had always deserved better, other times he thought she did know, but that she chose to stay with him anyway. He supposed it was the latter and, in that case, it only confirmed what he was already sure of: that woman was unbelievably wonderful and kind.

 

He tried to trick himself to fall asleep again. It was too early and they had nowhere to be that day, and he didn’t feel like getting up at all. He had an urge to drink that he didn’t want to indulge, at least not first thing in the morning. His marriage had been so close to being over just a couple of weeks before, he felt like he owed it to Margaret to make a conscious effort and be a better husband and a better person. He wasn’t likely to succeed, but this time he would really try. He suspected he was unable to bring happiness to anyone, but he had decided not to keep adding to Margaret’s unhappiness like he had during their life together. Sobriety was painful and boring and terrible, but he was determined not to drink himself into oblivion that day, or the day after. That was a start.

 

It wasn’t long before tossing and turning became exhausting in itself. He was bored and he couldn’t get his mind off alcohol. He got out of bed, put on his sleeping robe and went downstairs to have some coffee and toast for breakfast. His children had never had a good breakfast while growing up, and poor little Jane had not been with them long enough to know or enjoy the luxuries that had come to them by sheer (and in his case, undeserved) luck. She never knew this life, only poverty and unfulfilled needs. Somehow it made him feel even less deserving of what he had now.

 

He opened the paper on the front page. He payed no attention to the headlines and fixed his gaze on the date instead: December 21st. Phryne’s birthday and the summer solstice in Australia, where they were from. That day was the reason his little Jane had been killed. He had confused the dates, he had been as drunk as the day he had named his firstborn Phryne instead of Psyche, so he had written in December 21st on the birth certificate instead of September 21st. It felt like he had taken part in the murder of his own daughter, somehow. Since they had learned why Foyle had chosen her, not a day went by that he wasn't tormented by thoughts of this. The pain was excruciating, and he really did need a drink today of all days.

 

They were having Phryne and her detective friend over for dinner the following day. It had been his idea, and he had suggested his wife invited them because he had never imagined Phryne would accept. He knew that policeman was already in London (he didn't know what it had costed him, but he supposed his life savings would be a safe bet). He had seen them working together, he had seen their farewell at the airfield- there was no way they were putting on clothes and leaving their hotel suite to have dinner with him and his wife, he had thought. It would be a miracle if they put on clothes before mid January. But his daughter had telephoned to inform them they would be joining them for supper at the Fisher Residence on the 22nd.

 

He knew Margaret would like Jack. He probably thought Phryne was the reason the bloody moon came out every night, and so did his wife. They already had that in common, it was a safe bet that they’d get along well. (He really needed to stop thinking about gambling. He had promised Margaret he would stop gambling). Jack was a good person- everything he wasn’t, in fact. No wonder why his daughter was head over heels in love with him (he didn’t care that she’d never admitted to it every time he had asked. He simply knew it, she was mad about him).

 

Henry was afraid that meeting Jack would get Margaret’s hopes up regarding grandchildren. He wanted none, so it didn’t affect him that his daughter seemed to share the same view he had: children limited your options if you wanted to raise them well and be a responsible parent (he hadn’t done nor been either of those things). Phryne never did anything by halves, and she wasn’t selfish enough to have a baby just for the fun of it and then abandon the girl or boy so the household staff could deal with the child, and she would never quit her lifestyle to do it herself. She had taken that girl in and was giving her a good home and an excellent education, but paying to send a young lady to school and putting a roof over her head and feeding her meals wasn’t the same as experiencing motherhood from the start (it still was more than what he had done for his own children, though). She was a free spirit and she did not want anything anchoring her or cutting her wings.

 

But Margaret, who had been born to be a mother and had always dreamed of being one, was saddened by the idea that she would never have any grandchildren. She hadn’t been able to give her daughters a lovely, beautiful childhood, and she had hoped that she’d be able to provide for her grandchildren. The future had always looked childless for Phryne, but now she was bringing a man home for the first time. She had never introduced them to anyone she was involved with. Margaret was bound to get ideas, no one could blame her if she did. He only hoped she’d keep them to herself. Something told him Phryne would not appreciate her mother commenting on how handsome and intelligent and wonderful Jack was and what a marvellous husband and father he would make. The last thing he wanted was for dinner to become uncomfortable for everyone before the first curse had been even served.

 

He poured himself a second cup of coffee and then went back upstairs to see if Margaret was up. If he wasn’t going to drink that day, then he’d better find something to get his mind off the bottle. She had mentioned going to Selfridges & Co. to buy Phryne a present, and something about writing and sending Christmas Cards for friends and family. He could offer to help her with that. She didn’t like sleeping in, not even now that they could afford the days of leisure, and maybe it would do them both good to spend the day together distracting themselves instead of following their usual rutine of staying in and suffering in silence.

 

She was getting dressed when he went into the bedroom, and she was pleasantly surprised by his idea of finding a present for Phryne and then writing the Christmas Cards together. She had even smiled. She rarely smiled on days like this one. He decided to take the credit and told himself she was smiling because he was showing willingness to spend time with her and do things she enjoyed.

  
She was smiling again when they left the house an hour later. It gave him hope that he could be better, even if it was during the very last years of his life. Margaret deserved better and this time he would try. So help him God, he would try.


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> leaves become most beautiful  
> when they're about to die  
> when they're about to fall from trees  
> when they're about to dry up
> 
> time is all around - regina spektor

**JAQUES.** All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts.

 

_ As you like it (2.7.142-46) _

  
  


Their intimate birthday celebration made her feel so happy, she hummed against his lips every time he grabbed her by the waist and pulled her closer to steal a kiss. She liked this version of Jack Robinson, liked to hold his hand as they walked by the busy London streets, liked to wear his scarf around her neck even if sometimes it wasn’t an exact match to the rest of her clothes. (She knew she was beautiful enough to make any outfit work, so in her opinion the scarf went just fine with  _ almost _ all of her daily wardrobe). 

 

His present had undone her in the most wonderful, beautiful way. She hadn’t read any of the letters yet, but she was looking forward to it. Letters from any other man, scribbled thoughts about his feelings for her, would have terrified her and had her running in the opposite direction. After all, letters ( _ love _ letters, to be precise) were a display of vulnerability and intimacy, two of the many things she had always avoided with past lovers, but that she could not avoid with him. Now, in fact, she even  _ craved  _ them. 

 

They had made love all morning until every inch of their bodies ached, and then when the drizzle had stopped they had decided to treat themselves to some lunch and a walk in the city with no particular destination in mind. She hadn’t been lying when she’d told him she wished nothing for that day other than spending it with him. It was rare, enjoying the presence and company of a person so much she could be with them every waking minute and not feel trapped, or tired, or overwhelmed. It had never happened to her before, and as someone that was always open to trying new things she was so thankful she had decided to try this with him. She wouldn’t have wanted- never had wanted- any of this with anybody else. But he was different- different than her, different than any man she had been with. And as they crossed Hyde Park, fingers intertwined, she thought that even if it seemed odd in theory, even if few people would bet that they’d be able to make things work, in the end this relationship (and she was less and less afraid of calling it a relationship with each passing day) was like his scarf and her clothes: one could not see how they could go well together until one  _ actually _ saw them together and understood that sometimes mismatched elements were just meant to work simply  _ because _ .

 

He was especially affectionate with her that day, rubbing noses every time he could and stealing a peck on the lips here and there. She knew it wasn’t because of her birthday. The noticeable changes in his behaviour had been appearing progressively since his arrival. She generally didn't care that public displays of affection were frowned upon, and theirs were innocent enough. They had started with a kiss in the department store, and after that he had felt comfortable with repeating the action in other places they had been at. She was pleasantly surprised every time he reached out and stole a quick kiss from her, and it encouraged her to do the same. They were two scarred grown ups wandering about a London filled with Christmas lights behaving like two young, inexperienced sweethearts, and she  _ liked _ it. She liked how her hand fit in his, and how his skin roughened by the cold wind felt against the smoothness of hers. She liked everything about the winter, and about London, and about him.

 

They were walking along the edges of the lake when she blurted out a question without thinking about it much (then again, it wasn’t her style to think much before speaking):

 

“What do you like about me?” 

 

If the question surprised him, he didn’t let it show.

 

“I like many things about you”

 

“Would you care to elaborate?” she said, failing to suppress the smile that tugged at her lips.

 

“If you tell me your age as of today, I will tell you one thing I like about you for every year you have left behind. How does that sound?”

 

She made a pout with her lips in mockery sadness.

 

“It sounds like you are cruel.”

 

“You can always lie, Ms. Fisher. It is not unheard of, you know: most women lie about their age. They do it very often, in fact.”

 

“I'm not most women.”

 

“No, you are unique.”

 

She stopped walking, and he stopped as well. He had this ability to do or say things that undid her completely, and he didn't seem to notice. She wondered (briefly) if his written words would have on her the same effect the spoken ones had. She could answer to that question without hesitation: she just knew that they would affect her the same way, if not even more.

 

The Honourable Phryne Fisher did not tear up at a man's words. She had been called unique before. Men have called her many things, really. She was used to words of praise and adoration, just like she was used to running away from those that dared speaking them if she noticed they were becoming too emotionally involved or (even worse) if they seeked reciprocity. But with Jack Robinson she  _ did  _ feel like tearing up and- what was the scariest, most wonderful thing in the world- she felt like staying. He was as unique to her as she was to him.

 

She blinked away the tears, and he pretended he didn’t notice.

 

“Well, Jack,” she put on a serious, solemn face “I may as well tell you the truth. I am fifty.” 

 

He laughed softly.

 

“Phryne, you are not fifty.”

 

She acted offended.

 

“Well, maybe I want you to say fifty things you like about me.”

 

“But you had to know I wouldn't believe you. No one would believe that lie.”

 

“People often think I am older than my age.”

 

That was really the truth. She had always looked older, and it had never bothered her. She had known how to make it work to her advantage in a lot of situations, and in a society where women in general and young women in particular were obscenely overlooked she thought it was useful not to look her age. 

 

“Let me be the judge of that. How old are you?”

 

She wouldn't tell him without at least having some fun first.

 

“How old do you think I am?”

 

“Oh, no, Ms. Fisher,” he laughed again, and this time his eyes shone like the sun that was absent from the cloudy sky. “I am not falling for that.”

 

“I already told you I know I look older, so you can guess safely. It won't be anything I haven't heard before.”

 

He looked at her for a couple of seconds,  _ really _ looked at her, as if trying to decide how old he thought she was. After some consideration, he finally said:

 

“I think you're thirty five, maybe?”

 

She laughed. He was wrong. 

 

“I'm thirty. December 21st, 1899. I was born as the century was dying.”

 

“Well, they say things become most beautiful when they're about to die.” She raised an eyebrow, so he elaborated “Take the leaves in autumn, for example: they're so beautiful when they've dried up and are about to fall from the trees. The nineteenth century got even more beautiful when it was about to end because for ten wonderful days it had you in it.” He kissed the tip of her nose, and she once again blinked away tears. (And he once again pretended he didn’t notice anything).

 

“I told you I looked older.”

 

“That is because you are wiser than most women your age.”

 

“Did it surprise you?” She asked, as they resumed walking along the edges of the lake. “That I just turned thirty, I mean.”

 

“You have seen, and done, and experienced quite a lot of things for a woman that just turned thirty. Most people do not go through half the adventures you’ve had in the course of a lifetime, let alone in just a little bit more than a quarter of a century. It is wonderful and surprising how much you've accomplished, and I can't imagine the amazing, unknown territories you are yet to conquer.” 

 

He was looking at her,  _ admiring _ her, with pride. She was proud of herself, of course. She was proud of who she was, and of the way she lived her life, and of the family she had back in Melbourne. She was proud of the people she had helped and the people she had sought justice for. She was proud of being a feminist, and a bohemian, and a free spirit. She had never cared for other people's opinions on herself, and she went about life making the choices she thought to be better- that hadn't changed nor would it change in the future. She was still the same open-minded, revolutionary woman she had been the morning their paths had crossed for the first time. But it wasn't until that moment that it occurred to her that she was proud she made  _ him _ proud. 

 

“I believe you have to say thirty things you like about me, Jack Robinson. If you can find that many, that is” she teased him.

 

They stopped again. He carefully removed his gloves and put them away in his pocket, and cupped her face in his large, warm hands.

 

“I like your freckles, each and all of them. They're the tiniest detail there is to notice, difficult to keep count of, and arranged in strange constellations. Just like gold stars.”

 

“But you are not a telescope, Jack...” she reminded him. 

 

“I like your eyes, and your mouth, and your smile…”

 

“You're just mentioning random parts of my face… That's cheating, inspector” she accused him.

 

“It's not cheating. It just happens that I like all of you” he replied, softly. “I like that you care so deeply about everyone who touches your heart, and that you make a difference in the world by being generous and compassionate. I like how you don't hide your scars and show them with pride because they've made you who you are, and I like how you're not afraid to ask for help when you need it.”

 

She had a flashback of the night she had asked him to go with her to Guy and Isabella's engagement party. She had told him she needed him there to remind her not to be afraid of shadows, and she had meant every word. He had shadows of his own to battle, the dissolution of his marriage almost final at that time, but he had gone anyway. He had shown up at the party just like he always showed up by her side every time she needed him. He was always there for her, and instead of making her feel trapped it made her feel safe.

 

“I like your sense of humor, and your laughter, and the passion you throw into everything you do. I like your creativity, and your resourcefulness, and your imagination. I like that you speak so many languages and that you know how to fly a plane.”

 

“I guess my driving skills when I'm behind the wheel in the Hispano-Suiza won't make the list” she joked.

 

“No, I don't like that you are a reckless driver,” he admitted “but I like that you don't let anything stop you from achieving your goals. Although yes, I do wish you were a more careful driver.”

 

“I'll take it into consideration.”

 

She was telling the truth. She still remembered how upset he had been when he'd thought she had got in a car accident- the look he had on his face when he confessed he had arrived at the crime scene believing it was her body he'd be seeing in the driver's seat of that vehicle was not something she would likely forget,  _ ever _ . She had dismissed his worries at the time, had been mad at him for walking out of their partnership allegedly because of her reckless behavior. But now she understood better and regretted she had failed to do so back then. He just loved her and didn't wish to see anything bad happen to her, that was all. And she was realizing now that she loved him enough to try to not have him sick with worry every time she started the engine of a car. 

 

“I like how you rub your cold feet against my ankles when you can't fall asleep. You have a fondness for forbidden books, and Iike that as well, in the same way that I like just how well read you are. And I like that you are smart, and kind, and stubborn, and you look cute when you're scared of spiders.” 

 

They both laughed for a moment, then he got serious again all of a sudden. 

 

“But I also like how you look when you're fast asleep on top of me, and I like that you often mistake me for the mattress, even if my arms and legs lose all circulation. And I like the look on your face when we make love and the sounds that go with it. And I liked that you asked me to come after you, and that you wear my scarf all the time, and that you don't mind my snoring, and that you are just you.” He sighed. “I like everything about you, Phryne, from your black hair that is a hell of a mess in the mornings to the sound of your steps because I...”

 

He took a deep breath and she almost guessed what were the words he was working up the courage to get out. It had been implied, they had tiptoed around it, but they had never said it out loud. She felt his love for her all the time and everywhere, and she was sure he knew she loved him, too. She didn't remember wanting to say those words to any other man, and she was sure she had never wanted to hear them up until this point. 

 

She got so anxious she didn't let him finish. She cut him off with a kiss that was both sweet and passionate. They were both breathless when she pulled away and rested her forehead against his. She looked him in the eye and simply whispered: 

 

“I know, Jack. Me too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would like to thank Fire_Sign for answering my questions about what year Phryne was born in.


	18. Chapter 18

**HAMLET.** For there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

 

_Hamlet (2.2.234-35)_

  


There used to be a time where he wouldn’t have bet money on the Honourable Phryne Fisher accepting an invitation from her parents to have dinner at their house for her 30th birthday.

 

But that had been a time before London, before learning more about her complicated relationship with the Baron and the even more complicated relationship with her mother. It wasn’t a subject they talked about frequently, but she had told him enough for him to have better insight on the matter: she resented her father enormously, hated him even, and she could not understand why her mother had put up with him for so long. It was probable that she resented her a little as well for not working up the courage to leave him, but she still cared about her deeply to make an effort and have dinner with them.

 

She had told Jack she would let him know whether she’d go or not once she made up her mind, and then she had left it at that, busy as they had been wandering about London hand in hand or making love against every wall and hard surface in their hotel suite.

 

They had been in bed when she brought it up again, on the night of the 21st. He had been completely naked, sitting with his back resting against the headboard. She had sat in between his outstretched legs, facing him, a bowl of fresh strawberries and a bottle of champagne and two glasses on the nightstand at arm's length. She had put his shirt on (and forgotten to do the buttons up) and arranged her hair, now a little bit longer than it had been when she'd left Melbourne, up in a very messy bun. She had looked so sexy and carefree, not a single drop of makeup on her face, he had secretly wished he could always see her like that: laughing as she poured them both more champagne, sucking the sweetness off her fingers in a teasing fashion after every strawberry she ate. Happy. He had wished he could always see her this happy.

 

He had been over the moon himself. Earlier that day as they had been walking around Hyde Park she had implied that she loved him. He had suspected as much for some time now, but she had actually used words this time. He had been about to tell her he liked everything about her because he _loved_ her when she had cut him off with what had instantly become his favorite phrases in the world (even more so than ‘come after me, Jack Robinson’).

 

_I know, Jack. Me too._

 

She loved him, too. He would never want or need for anything else.

 

“Strawberry for your thoughts” she had said, offering him one from the bowl. He had taken it from between her thumb and middle finger with his mouth, careful to grasp at her skin with his teeth as he had done so.

 

“I was just thinking you look beautiful.”

 

She had fed him another strawberry, and then said:

 

“I accepted my parents’ invitation to have dinner at their house tomorrow night. When my mother called again the other day, she mentioned in passing that it had been Father’s idea to have us over for dinner. I immediately guessed that he suggested she invited us because he thought I’d say no but she’d be pleased that he suggested it nonetheless. Well,” she had sucked on the tip of a rather big strawberry before taking a bite “you know how much I love to contradict my father.” Phryne had explained to him, a mischievous smile on her face. “The invitation extends to the both of us, but it’s entirely up to you whether you come or not.”

 

“Do you want me to go with you?” he had asked, gently stroking her ankle with his knuckles.

 

“That depends. Do you want to come with me?”

 

“I’ve already told you I’d go anywhere with you as long as you want me to.”

 

“I do want you to come with me. But I don’t want you to feel like you have to do or go through anything that you may find uncomfortable, just like I know that you wouldn’t expect me to do anything that made me uncomfortable.”

 

“I don’t mind joining you and your parents for dinner tonight.”

 

He had taken her hand in his and they had intertwined their fingers. Intimate moments like that one, small displays of affection that had nothing to do with sex and lust had been happening more and more frequently, and he had loved every single one of them.

 

She had held his hand to her lips and kissed it softly. And then she’d looked into his eyes and whispered:

 

“Thank you.”

 

“You have nothing to thank me for, Ms. Fisher.”

 

“I have never done this before, you know” she’d commented matter-of-factly, taking another sip from her champagne glass.

 

“I am positive I have seen you drink champagne before, Ms. Fisher.” He had been joking, of course. He’d known very well what she had been trying to tell him.

 

She’d rolled her eyes.

 

“You know what I mean, Jack.”

 

“No, I don’t.” He’d smiled at her teasingly, his long fingers running up and down her arm, the contact sending shivers down her spine. “Enlighten me, please.”

 

“I have never introduced anyone to my parents before. I mean,” she’d tried to phrase it differently “I’ve never been emotionally involved with anyone before long enough or seriously enough to want to introduce them to my parents. Well, to my mother.” It’d seemed like she had felt the need to clarify that. “I don’t give a damn about my father, really. Besides, you two have already met.”

 

He had understood what she’d just said but, most importantly, he had also understood what she hadn’t said, and filled in the blanks by himself. René DuBois had been the only man she had somewhat been emotionally involved with, and that had happened (and thank God it had ended) a long time ago. She had been young, had been living abroad all by herself. The world had been still recovering from a global war that had been more terrible than anyone could have imagined. That awful monster had scarred her deeply with his controlling, abusive behaviour- she had barely escaped (and he hated to think what could have happened, what would have happened, if she hadn’t done so).

 

Jack had known for quite some time that that relationship was the main reason why Phryne had decided not to commit to anyone ever again, that it was what had led her to believe that if she let someone love her then it meant she had to hand them control over her life. This had changed lately, somehow, and now she was willing to admit- both to him and to herself- that what they had was a committed relationship. She knew he would never ask her to change, that he would never expect her to give up anything of what made her… well, her. Otherwise, she would not be the woman he had fallen head over heels in love with. He had never expected her to want him to meet her mother, had never expected to do anything conventionally with her. He had had his share of following tradition, and he hadn’t been happy. Phryne made him happy, unconventional and prone to laugh at tradition’s face as she was.

 

“You don’t have to explain anything to me, love” he had reassured her. “I’d go anywhere with you.”

 

What had followed had been another round of hungry kisses and throaty moans. He hadn’t known what to say, and at the same time he had wanted to say a thousand things. Their lovemaking had been wordless, except for a whisper she had let slipped in his ear when he had tensed and stilled and come inside of her:

 

“Me too.”

 

After that, they had fallen asleep wrapped up in each other.

 

They were on their way to Wimpole Street now. They had spent the day visiting antique shops and then the British Museum. It had been fun and relaxing, and he couldn't believe just how much happier he was since he had arrived at London. (It was all her doing, of course- she made him deliriously happy).

 

“You should completely ignore my father" she advised him. “And you don't have to answer any questions from my mother that you deem inappropriate. I have already warned her when we spoke on the telephone this morning: one misstep and we're out the door.”

 

He had never seen her quite so nervous, and it was both fascinating and (he hated to admit this) terrifying. A nervous Phryne Fisher! He had to be dreaming, really. But he knew she cared about him a lot (she _loved_ him) and didn't want him to feel uncomfortable. (He loved her for it. But then again, he loved her for everything she did and was).

 

“We are here” she announced when the cab stopped in front of a very beautiful house.

 

He paid the fare and they stepped out of the vehicle hand in hand.

 

She didn't ring the bell or made their presence known in any other way before she opened the front door. This was her house too, he supposed- he didn't think she considered this place her _home_ , but it was her house nonetheless.

 

Phryne had told him her parents only had day help and that usually one or two staff members were asked to stay after hours to work in the kitchen and serve if they were having guests over for dinner, so Jack wasn't surprised there wasn't a maid or a butler to welcome them and take their coats. He preferred it this way, really- it was more familiar, less intimidating for a working class man like he was. He had eventually warmed up to Mr. Butler, and Dot, and everyone that worked in Wardlow, but it had taken some time getting used to being asked what he wanted to drink and _Is everything alright, sir_ and _Is there anything else you need, sir._ He wasn't sure he would have been comfortable with interacting with an English maid and butler at the same time as interacting with Phryne's parents. (Which he knew was ridiculous, really- he was a grown man, an officer of the law that usually dealt with _criminals_ and _murderers_. And yet he felt intimidated by meeting Phryne's parents and thankful that he wouldn't have to be interacting with the help).

 

“Mother!” Phryne called again, more impatiently.

 

An elderly couple came out of the room adjacent to the drawing room. He had met the man before, of course. The last time Jack had seen the Baron he had been terrified of the plane taking off without Phryne behind the controls to fly it, and urging them to be over with their farewell as soon as possible. There was a woman arm in arm with him, and her Jack had never seen before. She was a very beautiful, very elegant lady with deep, blue eyes and hair as black as raven feathers. Jack was struck by how remarkably like her mother Phryne was, and when the woman smiled at them the resemblance was even more evident.

 

“Phryne, dear!” Margaret kissed both her daughter's cheeks. Jack and the Baron shook hands politely and nodded their heads to the other.

 

“Hello, Mother.” Phryne looked at her father and her expression grew visibly colder. “Father.”

 

“Hello, Phryne.”

 

“You must be Detective Inspector Jack Robinson!” Margaret said, taking a good look at Jack for the first time.

 

“It's a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Fisher” Jack said.

 

“Henry mentioned you were handsome, but I never imagined how so. No doubt you have finally made my daughter want to settle down!”

 

Phryne's smile was still in place when she spoke to Mrs. Fisher, but her tone was firm:

 

“Jack didn't make me do anything, Mother. Nobody makes me do anything. This relationship is a partnership, we are equals. He doesn't do anything he doesn't want to because of me, and I don't do anything I don't want to because of him.” Phryne looked at him and gave him a little smile. “Right, inspector?”

 

Jack smiled back at her. He realized they were still holding hands when he felt her thumb rubbing his wrist reassuringly.

 

“That's right, Ms. Fisher.”

 

“I told you they were weird together.” Henry told his wife. “Now who wants a drink? Shall we go into the parlour? I can't drink myself,” he commented “I promised Margaret I'd lay it off.”

 

Drinks went relatively well. Phryne steered the conversation to gardening, which was something Margaret enjoyed as much as Jack. Mrs. Fisher  was fascinated by Jack’s knowledge, and the more he talked about the topic the more he relaxed. Phryne and the Baron sat in silence and listened to both of them going on about orchids and rosebushes. She was looking at her father warningly, stopping him from saying something inappropriate or else she would just get up and leave without hesitation.

 

When it was announced that dinner was ready, Margaret and Jack walked into the dining room arm in arm while they continued their discussion on dutch tulips. He saw Phryne smiling reassuringly at him out of the corner of his eye, and he smiled back at her.

 

The conversation topic changed to literature during the course of dinner, and Phryne joined them. They mostly talked about classics, Henry making a comment or two about how he’d never been interesting in reading. (Phryne’s tension was evident to Jack every time her father opened his mouth, as was her relief when he finished talking without having said anything out of place).

 

It was while they were eating dessert that Margaret brought up a subject that made Jack uncomfortable because the moment the words left the woman’s mouth he knew Phryne would be greatly upset:

 

“You’re such a brilliant, well-read man, Jack! I can clearly picture you reading bedtime stories to your children and teaching them how to grow cherry tomatoes from seed! I do hope they take after you- Phryne’s never liked gardening. But she does have a marvellous imagination! She often made up her own bedtime stories to entertain Janey and herself. I think it’d make an adorable picture if one of your kids inherited that from her!”

 

Jack didn’t have time to say anything- he didn’t even have time to process half of Margaret’s words- because Phryne spoke up immediately, her tone very dry and sarcastic:

 

“Please do let my mother know if your children with an unknown woman do take after you, Jack. Make sure to find someone who has a marvellous imagination, so with any luck they will inherit that from her and you’ll be able to  write to my mother here about how they entertain themselves with their own made-up bedtime stories.”

 

“Why are you being so harsh, Phryne, dear?” Margaret asked, visibly shocked by her daughter’s words.

 

“Because she’s always been bloody open about her aversion to having children and yet you’re pushing the subject onto this poor man’s lap, as if he stood a chance to change her stubborn mind!” Henry told her.

 

“That is one of the most reasonable, intelligent things I have ever heard you say, Father.”

 

“Phryne may not have always considered maternity, but maybe Jack does want to have children.” Margaret turned to him. “Wouldn’t you like that, dear? Being a father?”

 

It had been a long time since Jack had thought about children of his own. It hadn’t happened for him and Rosie, and they had never been sure whether the problem to conceive had been hers or his. A child had been something his former wife had wanted desperately, just like he had been desperate to make up for the fact that he had come back from the trenches a changed, almost unrecognizable man. But once they had stopped trying, the idea of children had left his mind completely. He had made peace with the fact that he would never become a father a long time ago, before even meeting Phryne. It didn’t really matter now. He had recently turned thirty eight, he was devoted to his job, and he was in love with a woman that did not want children. He respected that, he respected _her_ , just like he had respected Rosie’s desire to be a mother.

 

“I can’t say I entertain the idea of having a child, no. My former wife and I tried for some time with no success- several years of failed attempts tend to put a damper on one’s interest. And after the end of my marriage, I decided it wouldn’t happen for me. I focused on my career. I am a career man, as is your daughter; we’re both committed to our professions. She doesn’t want to be a mother, and I can do perfectly well without being a father. Besides, I don’t think we have the time, energy or space in our lives to fit a child in them. And I know how your daughter feels about marriage- and having been married once myself, I am not up to do it again.”

 

Margaret looked very sad, disappointed almost. The Baron, on the other hand, was smiling satisfactorily at Jack’s answer. Phryne he didn’t wish to look at, for he didn’t think he was ready to face whatever expression she had, not even if it was one of agreement.

 

“I think it’s such a pity, Jack.” Margaret said. “You would make an excellent husband and an amazing father!”

 

“Well, Mother,” said Phryne, and when Jack turned his head in her direction he saw she was trying very hard to not look as upset as she probably felt “you can always set him up with one of your friends’ young daughters that are the motherly type if Jack desires so.”

 

“What are you talking about, Phryne?” Henry voiced Jack’s exact thoughts before Jack himself even had time to open up his mouth “The man’s just said he doesn’t want any children and he’s not interested in marriage!”

 

“Mother here thinks Jack’s potential as a loving husband and father is to go to waste with me.”

 

“And I have just told your mother, Phryne,” Jack decided it was time he said something “that I don’t consider my life as it is now to be a good fit for marriage or parenthood.”

 

Jack had no idea why Phryne was so upset. He thought he had been very clear in his answer: he didn’t want children, he hadn’t thought about that in ages, he didn’t want to get married again, he respected her and wouldn’t ask her to be anything she wasn’t. She had said it herself earlier that night: their relationship was a partnership. They were partners. He understood Phryne being mad at her mother, but he didn’t have a clue as to why Phryne was refusing to meet his eyes.

 

“I am sorry you feel this way, darling,” Margaret said “but I thought that maybe you’d be ready to see that with time and effort, and the help of a wonderful man like Jack, you could make for a great mother. You’re thirty now, dear. I don’t want you to have any regrets. Or Jack, for that matter” she added, looking at him with what was without a doubt pity.

 

Phryne stood up, and Jack immediately knew that the night was over.

 

“I do regret I accepted your invitation to come here tonight, Mother.”

 

“Come on, Phryne, sit down!” Henry said “Don’t be so stubborn! You know what your mother is like…”

 

She ignored him, and spoke to Jack instead:

 

“If you wish to stay for nightcaps, Jack, I am sure my parents would love to have you. You haven’t talked to my mother about your love for bicycle races, have you? Maybe she’ll convince you of seeking a woman that’d be willing to give you lots of children to go out for a ride on Sunday mornings with.”

 

And with that the Honourable Phryne Fisher turned on her heels and exited the dining room, leaving a very confused Jack behind, still sitting at the table with a saddened Margaret and a somewhat bemused Henry.

  
A second later, Jack snapped out of his trance, got up, excused himself to Mrs. Fisher and the Baron, and followed her.


	19. Chapter 19

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove.

O no, it is an ever-fixèd mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wand'ring bark,

Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.

Love’s not time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle’s compass come:

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

  If this be error and upon me proved,

  I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

 

**Sonnet 116**

**William Shakespeare**

 

 

The night was cold- London winter had just started but it already was at its best-, and she had forgotten her coat inside the house. She wouldn't go back to get it, though- in that moment, she'd rather freeze to death than be under the same roof as her mother.

 

Oh, how furious she'd made her! Talking to Jack about marriage and children in that pitiful tone, implying that his potential as a father and husband would likely go to waste if he stayed with her because she wasn’t interested in that kind of life. The words kept playing over and over again in her head, and she could feel the blood boiling in her veins. It was a mixture of what her mother had actually said with what she very well knew she had been implying: _Oh your children would be like this_ and _Your children would surely enjoy that_ , but then _Oh poor dear Jack, you won’t get to have any children because you’ve fallen for my feminist, modern-minded daughter that does not feel like she needs to carry a baby in her womb and give birth to it in order to reach fulfillness as a woman._ It made her want to smack something, or be sick, or both.

 

It was so like her mother, offering unsolicited advice left and right, and giving her opinion even though no one had asked for it. What the hell had got into her that she’d believed that a belated birthday celebration with her parents would be a good idea? Why the hell had she brought Jack with her? What for? How hadn’t she anticipated something like this would happen? She had been high on love, that had been why, and what for, and how. Everything had been so glorious, so perfect between them since he had arrived in London, that she’d believed that blissful paradise they had built for themselves would extent to everywhere they went. She had been so foolish. She had to have known better than that.

 

 _What an idiot I’ve been, really_ , she thought bitterly as she walked down the street. She wondered how long it would take her to find a cab in that weather, and all of a sudden she felt nostalgic for Melbourne, where she had her Hispano-Suiza to drive recklessly at her leisure, or Bert and Cec to drive her around if she didn't feel like getting behind the wheel. And in Australia she also had, of course, the benefit of her parents living in a whole different continent, completely unaware and (in the case of her father, uninterested) about what was going on with her life except for what she chose to write in her missives.

 

She wouldn't have minded waiting for a cab in that weather had she been with Jack. They would have found a way to make it fun. She wouldn't have minded walking back to the hotel hand in hand with that man, for Heaven's sake! She knew she had no place being furious at him, that he had done nothing wrong. In fact, his answer to her mother had been nothing short of perfect. Why the hell was she so mad at him, then? Why did she feel like she could smack him and yell at him and maybe even throw something at him?

 

_Maybe it's because I don't believe him when he says that he doesn't want to have children and that he wouldn't marry again._

 

There she was, the Honourable Phryne Fisher, facing one of the problems of having fallen deep for someone. That was one of the reasons why she had always put so much effort into avoiding commitment: because she didn’t enjoy dilemmas like this one. She was a half of something now. She had a relationship with a man she was desperately in love with, she was no longer fighting the shadows just by herself. His heart was hers to care for, and she had promised him she'd not be reckless with it (even if he had said he was giving it to her willingly and that she was free to do with it whatever she pleased, recklessness included).

 

She had been so happy she had finally allowed herself to give in and be with him. She was sure he would never expect her to change anything about herself, and that was one of the reasons why he made her feel so safe. But she had completely forgotten to take into account that maybe the price he was paying to be with the woman he loved was changing bits about himself and giving up his hopes and dreams because he wanted _her_ more than he wanted _them_.

 

_The noble Detective Inspector Jack Robinson: can't live without him, can't hit him with an axe._

 

“Phryne!”

 

She kept on walking straight ahead as if she hadn't heard him, although her heart began to beat faster against her chest like it always did when he called her name.

 

She wouldn't give him the satisfaction of turning around. Yes, she had no place being mad at him. No, knowing and admitting this to herself wouldn't make her stop being mad at him. Or at herself. Or at the whole situation. And yes, she was being selfish and childish, that was true. No, she saw no point in talking to him because she felt so emotionally vulnerable right now so she was likely to spit her heart out, and oh God did she really feel like crying over how much this man loved her? (Yes, she did. And she would not give him the satisfaction of seeing her cry for him, even if she truly did not believe he'd feel any satisfaction off seeing her cry.)

 

Love really was madness, and whoever had invented it must have been as crazy as lovers themselves were.

 

“Phryne!” he called again, and this time he was so close she could smell her own perfume on him from how close they had sat in the cab ride to her parents’ house. She could clearly imagine a worried, hurt expression on his face, although she had her back to him.

 

She was not going to react. She felt so angry, so frustrated. She just wanted to get back to the hotel already, and lock herself in the bathroom and get inside the shower and scream as loud as she could until her throat hurt or until she drowned, whichever happened first.

 

He tried getting her attention a third time:

 

“Miss Fisher!”

 

She didn't turn around, but she did stop walking. It really was a cold night and Phryne was shivering, goosebumps and all. Upon noticing this, he took off his coat and gently put it on her shoulders, careful as to not touch her in case she did not wish any physical contact between them (which she was telling herself she didn't, but who the hell did she think she was kidding? Deep down she wanted nothing but that). Phryne hesitated for a second but then she wrapped his coat around her trembling body. It smelt like him, like safety and home.

 

“This isn't fair game, inspector” she said, her back still to him, her tone angry and bitter. “You are trying to make me crumble, soften me up…”

 

“I'm trying to understand why you are so upset with me, Phryne.” He sounded defeated, and sad, and she realized it was her who wasn't being fair at all. He had no idea what she was feeling or why, and he was no mind reader. She didn't have a right to expect he worked out by himself what was bothering her. If she shut down and didn't communicate with him, then she would be doing exactly what he had done to his former wife after the war. He didn't deserve that. He deserved better, he'd always deserve better, and maybe that was the problem to begin with.

 

She turned around and looked him in the eyes. The love she saw there was as pure and strong as the love she felt for him. And in that moment she knew that she could share her doubts and fears with him, that opening up even more than she already had done was by no means a sign of weakness but one of strength. She could share anything with him, and she had already made the decision- consciously or not- that she would be sharing the rest of her life with Jack Robinson, because there was no way she would ever be able to live without him. And that didn't make her less independent, that didn't mean she had become a less modern or open-minded woman. It made her someone lucky enough to have found her match, someone that made her feel safe, and happy, and at home every time he put his arms around her.

 

The words just blurted out of her mouth:

 

“My mother thinks you're going to waste with someone like me.”

 

“I don't think that…”

 

She cut him off.

 

“Jack, let me finish. I know you don't care what my mother thinks. _I_ don't care what my mother thinks. When you first arrived in London, I told you we only answered to ourselves. Well,” she took a deep breath “what my mother said back there stirred some things inside me, things I thought were long forgotten but apparently aren't.”

 

He looked at her with a puzzled expression on his face, but instead of asking the questions she could read in his eyes (she was, after all, the person that knew him better than anyone) he said:

 

“Phryne, it's freezing. Let's find a cab and head home. We can talk about everything and anything for as long as you want. I will listen, I will understand. I'll give you time, space, whatever you need.” She could hear in his voice that he was desperate and scared. It occurred to her that he thought she was about to give him up, regret their attempt at a relationship and leave him. It broke her heart. “But please, darling, let's go home.”

 

Home. The hotel suite they had been sharing was home. Home was where he was. He was home. There was no going back. She adored him. They were stuck with each other.

 

“Jack, I don't need space or time away from you.” She wanted to make that clear. She saw see relief wash over him the moment she spoke the words.

 

He offered his hand for her to take, and so she did.

 

“Sweetheart, let's go home.”

 

“Can we walk home? Talk while we walk?” She asked.

 

“Yes, dear.”

 

They walked hand in hand in complete silence for a couple of minutes. It would never cease to amaze her how intimate it felt, how well his fingers fit in the space between hers. He didn't push her, didn't ask questions; he just waited patiently until she had her thoughts in order and began to talk.

 

“My mother wishes it would have been me.”

 

It was the first time she said the words out loud.

 

“She would never admit to it, I'm not even sure if she herself knows it consciously, but she wishes it would have been me the one murdered by Murdoch Foyle, not Janey. I'm not saying this because we now know that it was me who Foyle really needed for his ritual,” she was quick to clarify. “I've known this for years now, ever since my sister went missing. If my mother could have chosen which daughter to lose, she would have picked me. I know the feeling, believe me,” she left out a bitter laugh “I have spent a lot of time wishing the same. That he'd taken me.”

 

“Phryne…”

 

Jack's voice was soft and the way he said her name made her want to bury her face in his chest, hold him tightly and never let go. But she knew that if she let him comfort her now, then she would never get to say everything she had to say.

 

“Let me finish, please, Jack" she interrupted him. “Things would have been so much easier if it had been me. I was a lot of trouble, and Janey was not. I still am a lot of trouble for her, you see. My mother would be so much happier if she still had Janey. I know she wants grandchildren desperately. She thinks Janey would have given them to her. My sister died a little girl, there is no way for us to really know what her thoughts on marriage and motherhood would have been,” she laughed bitterly again, and she realized her eyes were watering with tears “but my mother is convinced that Janey would have been more traditional than I am, and that they could have married her well and she would have had plenty of beautiful, healthy and chubby babies.”

 

Phryne swallowed hard. The thought she was about to voice was one that was never far from her mind but that she rarely spoke of.

 

“Janey died and I lived. I am nothing like the daughter my mother wants and I have learned not to let it bother me in the slightest because it is my life and I am the only one with a say in it.”

 

“What upset you so much back there, then?”

 

They arrived at the hotel and fell into complete silence once more. They made their way through the lobby and up to the suite still hand in hand. He closed the door, they took off their shoes and changed into more comfortable clothes without making a sound. He wore the pajamas she had bought for him, and she put on a wool cardigan he had in his suitcase. They both sat on the bed, her bare legs up to her chest and her arms wrapped around them. He looked at her like she was the most precious thing in the world to him, and she knew that in his eyes she truly was.

 

“I don't deserve you, Jack Robinson.” She whispered. “But I am so selfish I want to keep you anyway.”

 

He searched for her hand in the moonlit room and intertwined their fingers again when he found it. Then, he repeated the question she had left unanswered when they'd reached the Ritz gates:

 

“Phryne, what upset you so much back in your parents’ house?”

 

She took a deep breath and let it all out. He was her best friend, her lover, her partner, her _everything_. If she couldn’t talk about anything with him, then she couldn’t talk about anything with anyone. He’d listen, he’d understand. He always did.

 

“I don’t care if my mother misses out on having grandchildren. But I do care if you miss out on something you want. She is right about one thing, Jack: you would make an excellent father. I know what you said to her, but I also know that you wanted children once and that you believed in the institution of marriage. By being with me you are closing the door on those things.”

 

She took another deep breath. Her voice was calm (how she was managing that, she didn’t know), but she talked faster than usual, as if she wanted to get it all out as quickly as possible.

 

“Are you sure I am worth it? Because I am not likely to change my mind on marriage or motherhood, and it'd be unfair of me to expect you to give those things up just because I don't find them appealing. You have never asked me to give up who I am. I don't want you giving anything up because of me. The kind of life my mom described, teaching your kids to grow vegetables from seed and reading them bedtime stories, I cannot give you that. I can't judge you if you want that, and it would be unfair if I expected you to choose me over a family.”

 

He didn't say anything. Her heart was beating so fast she was starting to have trouble breathing. Jack cupped her face in his hands and kissed her so softly their lips barely touched.

 

“I am yours to keep for as long as you want.”

 

“I think you didn't get the point, Jack.” She sighed. “I don't want you to choose between me and a family if that is what you want. I would hate it if you grew to resent me for…”

 

He cut her off, his lips on hers once more. And then he spoke in that low, soft voice that touched her heart, mind and soul in all the right places.

 

“I just want you.”

 

“I would never forgive myself if you missed out on anything you may wish to experience because I didn't give it to you…”

 

He sealed her lips with another kiss.

 

“Phryne, I just want you” he repeated.

 

“Jack…”

 

He cut her off with another kiss.

 

“I can keep this up all night" he warned her with a smile that reached his warm eyes. But she didn’t smile back.

 

“Shutting me up with kisses won't solve anything.”

 

She got up and walked to the other side of the room where there was a beautiful escritoire set. She sat on the white leather chair, legs up and knees to her chest. He understood that she wanted physical space, so he stayed where he was. And by doing that he was showing her for the millionth time that he loved her so much and was so right for her he could read her body language as easy as he read a Shakespeare sonnet. It should have made her feel vulnerable, but he was the exception to every rule she'd ever had, so it made her feel safe instead.

 

 _This is it. I am so head over heels in love with this man that I want to spend the rest of my life with him if he'll have me. And the only thing that terrifies me about it it's what it could cost_ him. _Damn you, Jack Robinson, whatever have you done to me!_

 

“I am sorry if you thought I was looking to distract you and change the subject.” He apologised. “I was not. But everything I said -to you, to your mother- is true. When I was married to Rosie we tried for children and it didn't happen for us. It never was clear whether she had a problem or if I did. We eventually decided it wasn't worth to keep on trying. Then our marriage ended and I stopped thinking about it altogether. In fact, I had stopped thinking about it long before Rosie and I separated. I do not have the need to father a child to feel I have a happy, fulfilled life. I choose to be with you because I just want you. _You_ , Phryne Fisher, make me happy.”

 

She felt like crying, and at the felt time she felt like laughing. It was something she had been having trouble getting used to: being in love meant she sometimes experienced mood changes so fast she got dizzy. There were times such as this that she experienced every emotion that was known to humankind at the same time. It was exhausting. But it also made her feel more alive than ever. And wasn’t that what she had always chased after? The beautiful feeling of being _alive_.

 

He was the most wonderful person she’d ever known, she’d never forgive herself if he ever thought he wasn’t important to her. That verse from the Bible that Dot liked so much was right: love _was_ selfless.

 

“Are you sure?” she asked. “Because I would hate to do to you what I have spent most of my adult life running away from: tricking you into the belief that because we love each other you belong to me and I get to do with you whatever I want because loving you means owning you.”

 

She knew he’d understand what she was talking about. _Who_ she was talking about. She didn’t have to be more specific. He knew the details, he had heard and even seen for himself what René DuBois had been capable of. Jack wasn’t ignorant on how René had controlled her, manipulated her, frightened her and abused her, all the while claiming that everything he did he did out of his love for her and because he- the superior being in their relationship- knew what was better for her.

 

“This is a relationship between equals, Phryne.” Jack said. “We are together because we choose to. You don’t want children and I don’t, either. We happen to agree on that one like we happen to disagree on other things- like the meaning of ‘driving safety’, just to mention one.” She laughed softly. “Darling, this modern love thing is new to both of us, but we’ll be fine.” he assured her. “You know why I’m so certain that we will?” She nodded her head no. “Neither do I.” He smiled, and this time she did smile back. “I just am.”

 

She breathed a sigh of relief and relaxed. She felt like the weight of the world had been lifted off of her shoulders. He was right: they were partners, they were equals, and they were both new to this modern love thing. She had got scared out of her mind thinking that perhaps she was being selfish with him, taking into consideration only what she wanted or didn’t want, what she needed or didn’t need, and completely forgetting his wants and needs. But now she could see those ghosts had been that: ghosts. And Jack, as always, had reminded her not to be afraid of shadows.

 

They loved each other. They could do this. They _would_ do this. Neither of them would have to give anything up to be with the other or to make the other happy. This was a partnership, no one controlled anyone, and they belonged together- not one to the other. They both had a say, they both had control. She wasn’t going to lose herself simply because she loved a man and chose to be with him- on the contrary, she was finding herself. And so was he. She’d probably get scared from time to time, but he’d be there to solve the puzzle with her (it was, after all, what they did best together).

 

They did each good. They made each other happy. Everything would be alright. She was with him. She was loved, and she was safe. The only place she wanted to run to was straight into his loving, warm embrace because it was _home_.

 

Phryne walked over to him and Jack gathered her in his arms. He sat back on the bed, she sat on his lap, and he held her in silently for a couple of minutes. He rubbed her back while she rested her head in the crook of his neck, and then he reached down to press kisses on her forehead.

  
“Me too” she whispered, looking up at him. “Me too, me too, me too.” She cupped his face in her hands, and rubbed her nose against his. “So, so, so.”


	20. Chapter 20

**LADY MACBETH.** Your face, my thane, is as a book where men may read strange matters.

 

_Macbeth (1.5.53-54)_

  


“ _We fucked a flame into being._ ”

 

He had whispered those words in her ear one night, while he had been buried deep inside her, her back flat against the bathroom wall and her open legs wrapped around him, his right hand cradling the back of her head. It had been one of the first times, and it had felt so intimate. Her reply had mostly consisted of incoherent sounds- moans, and _Fuck me_ , and _Come after me, Jack_ (although in that context it had had, of course, a different meaning). But in the aftermath, when they had been sitting facing each other in a mess of limbs on the cool bathroom floor, she had told him she was delighted that he had read- and enjoyed- the works of D. H. Lawrence. And so he had started to quote it to her now and then, the erotic beauty of _Miss Chatterley’s Lover_ strewn through their lovemaking. And then one day she had looked in his suitcase for the disguised copy Mr. Chetkov had given to him in Russia, placed it on the nightstand and challenged him to ravish her only with his voice. He had opened up the book and begun to read out loud some of the passages he had marked, and so his teeth and tongue had made love to her without grazing an inch of her skin.

 

She loved his voice. It built her up and then it made her come undone. It sounded as exquisite when he recited Shakespeare as when he breathlessly praised her beautiful mouth while she kneeled between his open legs and gave him oral pleasure. She craved his voice like she did the rest of him, even more so every time he quoted from a book that discussed the nature of sexuality and sensuality with such freedom and elegancy. She wondered if he knew that to have him read obscene literature to her felt as good in itself as the physical intimacy that always followed, that it caused her the same uncontrollable desire that his taste and touch. (Sometimes she guessed he knew the effect it had on her, and that he did it on purpose to arouse her. Other times she was almost convinced that he was clueless. She supposed that not knowing whether he could tell or not was part of what made it so exciting.)

 

They often discussed books, and they had visited Hatchards in Piccadilly street a couple of times as well as other, less-known and smaller bookshops in the London bohemian scene Phryne was so familiar with. He didn’t limit himself to only the most classic, traditional authors- he had read Keats, and Milton, and Wilde, but he also had an interest in philosophy and philology that showed in his knowledge of Nietzsche, Locke and Plato. He loved mythology, especially Greek and Roman. He could quote from Dante’s _Comedy_ , and he had read Poe as much as Victor Hugo.

 

“I read lots of adventure books as a boy” he had told her one evening. He had been sitting against the headboard while she rested on her side with her head on his lap. He’d run his fingers through her hair absentmindedly as he’d talked. “Verne and Stevenson were my favorite. And Dickens. I read Hodgson Burnett’s works, too. My sister loved her.”

 

“I stole a copy of _Little Lord Fauntleroy_ when I was eight.” She had confessed. “All the books I owned as a kid were stolen. I stole a copy of _Little Women_ for Janey once, too. I still have it. The copy I own of _Daddy-Long-Legs_ is also stolen.”

 

He had laughed and pulled her up to kiss her on the nose.

 

“You little thief.”

 

“I would do anything to get my hands on something I want” she had begun, a mischievous grin on her face “And when I was a poor Collingwood girl, I wanted books. I couldn’t afford them, so I stole them. I knew it was wrong, but I also knew that there were places, better places, to see, and that there were clever, interesting people with clever, interesting things to say. And those places and things could be found in books.” He had nodded his assent, content to keep on listening to her little monologue. She had gone on: “I wouldn’t let poverty stop me from finding them. Just like I’ve never cared about what’s banned and what’s considered to be appropriate. All literature is appropriate. I don’t let anyone tell me what to do- I’d never let anyone tell me what not to read.”

 

The topic of banned books had inspired him to whisper bits of poetry from Baudelaire's _The Flowers of Evil_ , and she still didn’t make up her mind about what had been more orgasmic: the sensation of his warm breath in her ear, the sound of his voice, or the ministrations of his fingers between her slightly parted legs.

 

“Have you read _Madame Bovary_ , Jack?” she had asked him in a different opportunity, while they had been undressing each other after a long day out. “Don’t you want to back me up against the wall and quote Flaubert’s novel as you fuck me senseless?”

 

“ _An_ _infinity of passion can be contained in one minute, like a crowd in a small space._ ”

 

She craved more of him reading to her in bed, and she had picked his Christmas present with that in mind. She knew someone from when she had lived in England that usually dealt with under the table translations for books that had caused shock and scandal for their contents. Those books weren’t likely to be officially translated into English in the foreseeable future. Phryne had come across some very interesting south american authors by this woman’s suggestions. Ms. Bezzecchi had mentioned Pablo Neruda to her one year after the chilean poet had penned a work so controversial due to his young age that she hadn’t been able to resist translating it to pass it around her inner circle. The copy of _Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair_ Phryne had bought from her had been in the trunk full of books she had taken to Melbourne, but she had phoned Ms. Bezzecchi to find out whether she would be willing to meet for tea and exchange money for another copy. They had had tea at the Ritz the afternoon before Christmas Eve.

 

“I telephoned one of my friends and we are meeting for tea this afternoon” she had told Jack over breakfast.

 

“Tea service at Palm Court Restaurant was excellent when we were there last week. If your friend isn’t from around London you should definitely take them there.”

 

“She is from London. She even suggested we met at Palm Court and shopped at Selfridges afterwards, but then she remembered she’s got a previous engagement tonight and she needs to be home early. So she’ll stop by and we’ll have tea in the hotel restaurant instead.”

 

“It sounds good. I was thinking of visiting the Science Museum again.” And then: “Do you want another piece of toast, Phryne?”

 

The only other man she had been in a relationship with had been violent and abusive, and he had never let her out of his sight. A conversation like the one she had just had with Jack would have been impossible with René. He had been always watching her, controlling her, breathing down her neck. Her making a mistake or speaking out of place (and oh, how René had insisted on her knowing exactly what her place was and who she belonged to) had been some of the worst triggers. He hadn’t liked her having friends, and she hadn’t been allowed to be alone with other people, whether he knew them or not. Jack hadn’t minded in the slightest that he hadn’t been invited to join them- he hadn’t even asked if he was supposed to, hadn’t even suggested that he wanted to go along with her. He hadn’t cared who this friend was, if they were male or female. He had taken it like a something completely natural that she'd want to spend time with a friend sans his presence, had even commented on his own plans for the afternoon since they wouldn’t be spending it together, and then he had asked if she wanted more toast.

 

Had she been expecting things to go differently? Had she been surprised that he hadn’t asked more questions or invited himself to tea with her friend? Of course she had known that he wouldn't interrogate her or get upset that he'd be spending the evening by himself. _Intellectually_ , she had known neither of those things would happen. But maybe- and admitting this to herself made her feel a little bit guilty- she had been surprised nonetheless because a part of her had thought that he'd ask a question or two or that he'd shown an interest in meeting this friend. He had done nothing of the sort. He was _Jack_ ** _._** He'd never see her as his property or tell her what she could and couldn't do. He'd always be fine with her being herself. He _loved_ who she was.

 

“Is something the matter, Miss Fisher? You've fallen silent all of a sudden.” He had asked as he poured himself a second cup of tea.

 

She had quickly given him a peck on the lips before grabbing the newspaper she had yet to read that morning.

 

“Nothing's the matter, detective inspector” she’d answered truly. And then, as an afterthought, she had added: “Me too, Jack.”

 

She had had her eyes on the front page of the newspaper, but she could have sworn he had been smiling when he’d said:

 

“Me too, Miss Fisher.”

 

They went to a Christmas Eve party the following day. They danced to jazz music. They drank, and they kissed, and the moment they were back in their hotel suite he told her how in awe he was of her, how watching her dance had been driving him crazy all night. He caressed every inch of skin he could reach once she was naked; he had lost count of how many times he had licked, and kissed, and touched her now, but somehow it always felt like the first time. And then when she pushed him on the bed, sank down on him and began to establish a steady rhythm with her hips, he quoted more of Flaubert’s words to her:

 

“ _She was the amoureuse of all the novels, the heroine of all the plays, the vague ‘she’ of all the poetry books._ ”

 

He helped her along with his fingers when he sensed she was close, and she braced herself against his shoulders as she came undone. When the last wave of intense pleasure washed over here, Phryne held his hand to her mouth and sucked on his thumb, then ran his tongue over his open palm. She tasted herself, and she tasted something that was definitely just _him_. She sucked on his pulse point, her eyes never leaving his, and the sound of their elaborated breathing filled the room. The smell of their sex was still lingering in the air.

 

She got off him- she sighed at the loss, she always did- but remained on top of him. He gathered her in his arms, kissed the top of her head, and she nuzzled the crook of his neck.

 

“Fuck me with your tongue without actually touching me, Jack Robinson.” She took his earlobe between her teeth. “Make love to me with your voice, detective inspector.” She rocked against him very slowly, only for a second, to coat his tight with her wetness. “Make me come again. No touching. Your voice only.”

 

It was a challenge he had taken upon many times before. She’d often ask him to fuck her like that: with his voice. He knew what she wanted: she wanted him to read to her, or quote from memory, whatever he felt like doing at the moment. He couldn’t touch her, and that was an explicit rule. But she couldn’t touch herself either, and Jack knew very well that she had come up with that (unspoken) rule just to tease him. He had to keep his hands to himself while she lay there- eyes closed, heavy breathing-, knowing how much his voice aroused her but unable to do anything to physically release the tension he was building, tortured by the sounds and faces she made as she concentrated on his voice and fought the urge to bring herself to orgasm. She’d always wait until he finished reading, and then she’d guide his head between her legs and he’d fuck her with his mouth the old fashioned way.

 

He had picked a Christmas present for her with these particular moments in mind. He had planned to give it to her on Christmas morning, but her whispering she wanted him to make love to her with his voice gave him a different idea. He left the bed, and her, for a moment and went to retrieve something from his suitcase. He had hidden it there the day before. She waited in silence until he returned to bed carrying something wrapped in brown paper. He sat down and she sat up, curiosity and anticipation written all over her face. The package was the size and shape of a book, so she guessed that that was what it was.

 

“I bought this because I thought you’d like me to actually read it to you from time to time, and not only quote from memory the little I remember. I know you have your own copy in Melbourne,” he said “as do I. But we haven’t brought them to London with us, and I really want to read this to you.”

 

Phryne smiled at him. She knew what it was before she unwrapped it. When she did, she looked at the cover and then at him while she traced his jaw with her fingertips.

 

“ _The smooth folds of her dress concealed a tumultuous heart, and her modest lips told nothing of her torment. She was in love._ ” This time it was her quoting Flaubert’s _Madame Bovary_ to him.

 

“I got it yesterday before I visited the Science Museum. I even marked some of my favorite passages, see?” Phryne opened the book to a random page and saw that Jack had underlined some paragraphs. She handed it back to him and lay on her back, her head on the pillow. “Shall I read this page to you, Miss Fisher?”

 

“Please do, detective inspector.”

 

“ _She did not believe that things could remain the same in different places, and since the portion of her life that lay behind her had been bad, no doubt that which remained to be lived would be better."_

 

She closed her eyes and Jack read on. When he reached the end of the chapter, she ran a hand through his messy hair and pulled him down for a kiss. He dropped the book on the floor and got on top of her. She let her hands wander: his back, his torso, his tights.

 

“ _I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair_ …” Phryne recited softly. “Do you know that love poem, Jack?”

 

“I don’t.”

 

“That’s what I supposed. I have a present for you, too. I hid it in the desk drawer.” She nuzzled his neck, his chest. She could feel his half-hard cock pressing on her tight. “It’s a book, too. Go find it, bring it to bed and read to me the page I marked.”

 

Jack did as he was told. He found a leather bound book with hand sewed pages. It was a handmade edition, and whoever had worked on it must have been a very meticulous person. He opened it carefully and flipped through it. They were poems, typewritten. The numbering on the pages and the title to each one of them, however, had been handwritten in red ink with beautiful calligraphy.

 

“ _Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair_ ” Phryne said when he went back to bed with her, his thumb holding the book open in the page she had marked. “It’s the second published work of a chilean poet, Pablo Neruda. I have a copy like that one back at home. His poems haven’t been translated into English… At least not officially.” He smiled at her. “But a friend of mine that has lived in South America and is fluent in Spanish… Let’s say that she translates her favorite authors just for fun.”

 

“And she makes the pages with said translations into leather bound books to pass around her friends? All just for fun?” Jack teased her.

 

“I trust that you’ll keep the secret, inspector. That’s why I’m letting you in on it.”

 

He kissed her softly on the lips.

 

“You can trust me with your life, Miss Fisher.”

 

She lay back on the bed, and he lay by her side.

 

“ _I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair._ ” She said the quote again, tracing the shape of his mouth with her fingers first, and then his jaw, his throat, while the other hand messed up his hair. And then she asked: “Read to me, Jack, please.”

 

 

> _I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair._
> 
> _Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets._
> 
> _Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day_
> 
> _I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps._
> 
>  
> 
> _I hunger for your sleek laugh,_
> 
> _your hands the color of a savage harvest,_
> 
> _hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,_
> 
> _I want to eat your skin like a whole almond._
> 
>  
> 
> _I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,_
> 
> _the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,_
> 
> _I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,_
> 
>  
> 
> _and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,_
> 
> _hunting for you, for your hot heart,_
> 
> _like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue._

 

He put the book aside when he was done reading the poem. He could feel every word he had read to her, he felt them everywhere: in every beat of his heart, in the blood running through his veins, in his soul, in his mind, in his skin, in his bones. He didn’t know if she had chosen that poem because it reminded her of him, or because she’d wanted to hear him said those things to her. Either way, he didn’t care. He only cared that she was there with him, and that he had the rare gift of being able to caress her with his voice in all the right places (whether visible or otherwise). Whatever the reason for her choosing this poem, he didn’t think it was important. If she had thought he’d like the poem because he’d see himself in the words the author had penned, she hadn’t been wrong. It was true: he craved all of her. And he was alright with her knowing that.

 

“Do you crave my voice, my mouth, my hair, Jack?” she asked him as they made love. “Do you hunger for my sleek laugh?” He moaned something that sounded like _yes_ , though she couldn’t be sure. “Do you?”

 

“I hunger for all of you, crave all of you.” He tried to remember more from the poem as he pumped into her. “ _I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body, the sovereign nose of your arrogant face, I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes._ ”

 

“Do you want to eat my skin like a whole almond?”

 

“I want to eat you _all_.”

 

Their lost rhythm and came together. She kept her legs wrapped around him and her mouth searched his to kiss him until the last wave of pleasure washed over them.

 

“Me too.” She whispered her love for him in their own special code. And then, in between kisses, she said: “Merry Christmas, detective inspector.”

 

“Merry Christmas, Miss Fisher.”

  
  
  
 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jack's taste in books was inspired by a lovely chat I had with our dear @Fire_Sign. She was, as ever, willing to listen to me while I was writing this chapter, sharing her thoughts and suggestions and just being the best at calming me when I freaked out over it not being good enough.


	21. Chapter 21

**CLEOPATRA.** Give me some music. Music, moody food of us that trade in love.

 

_Antony and Cleopatra (2.5.1)_

  


She had been the most beautiful woman at the New Year’s Eve party they had attended earlier that night- but then again, he always thought she was the most beautiful woman in the room, anywhere. Jack had been in awe of her the whole time, unable to take his eyes off her. He had adored how she’d danced, how she’d teased him, how she’d kissed him at midnight until they had been both out of breath, how she’d whispered in his ear every little thing she’d do to him when they went back to their hotel suite, and every little thing she wanted him to do to her.

 

“I want us to have a more private celebration,” she had said, slightly rubbing against him in rhythm with the jazz music the band had been playing, her teeth grazing his earlobe. “What do you think, detective inspector?” Her voice had been low and practically dripping sex, and he had briefly wondered how past him fucking her against a wall in one of the restrooms was. “Jazz was the warm up act, Jack. What I really want to do is waltz with you. Make me lose my head,” she had begged, softly, shifting against him so that he had been able to feel through the fabric of his trousers and the fabric of her dress that she had chosen not to wear undergarments. “Make me lose control.”

 

She made _him_ lose his head, and control, and himself, and it was so addictive and delicious that he wished he was never found. He had never felt so alive before he met her. She had lured him out of the darkness and into the light, and now that he was actually _with_ her he felt he had the world not at his feet but _in his arms_.

 

He couldn’t get enough of discovering and rediscovering her over and over again. The mystery of Phryne Fisher was as infinite as was her variety, and she had made him realize that some parts of him were still mysteries to himself because he had never been challenged or stimulated to solve the puzzles within. She helped him learn about them, approach them cautiously and intelligently like he would do it with a case, and then explore them with curiosity and passion. He had redefined himself in so many ways: as a friend, as a partner, as a lover. Phryne had been showing him life through different perspectives, and he now knew thanks to her what it was like to experience his own feelings and desires without the heavy weight of censorship. She had lifted that weight off of him, had shown him how amazing it was to let raw emotion wash over one’s body and mind unfiltered. She made him feel _free_.

 

The ride back to the Ritz had been torture. It had taken every ounce of self control Jack possessed, but they had made it (barely, yes, but they had made it nonetheless) to their suite without doing anything that could have really counted as ‘indecent exposure’. Phryne had teased his ear mercilessly with her tongue and teeth, knowing very well where to bite and lick to drive him crazy. She had been fairly careful at that, though, and he had been very successful in suppressing his moans; had the cab driver been paying any attention to them, it would have looked more like a woman whispering something to her partner than two lovers immersed in foreplay.

 

Jack hadn’t cared, anyway. He had drunk a little at the party, and so had she, but even if they hadn’t finished up an entire bottle of champagne all by themselves he wouldn’t have cared. He wouldn’t have fucked her in a car (well, at least not while there was someone else in there with them- the Hispano Suiza was a different story, and he was actually looking forward to fulfilling that fantasy when they returned to Melbourne), but he wouldn’t have minded the cabby noticing she was being a little affectionate. He hadn’t really thought much about it at the moment.

 

Phryne Fisher had that effect on him: she turned off the voices in his head that were always so insisting on pointing out what was right and what was wrong, what was morally correct and what was not. She made him want to get lost in pleasure and sensation, get in touch with the depths of his heart and soul. She made him want to live in the moment, something he had never known how to do until she had taught it to him.

 

They closed the door, tossed their coats God knows where, and Phryne undid his trousers and pushed them down his legs until they were a heap of fabric around his ankles. He held her up by the back of her knees, parted her legs and helped her hook them around him. He backed her up the wall and took full advantage of her choice of wearing nothing under her dress: he lifted her skirt and began to tease her with the tip of his cock until she whimpered in frustration.

 

“I can’t believe I haven’t fucked you since last year.”

 

The joke was silly and he knew it, but for a second she forgot how mad he was making her by not giving her what she wanted and laughed. He gently grabbed her by both her wrists and placed her arms above her head. He kept on rubbing against her, their fingers now intertwined, while she bit on her lips to make no noise. She was looking at him defiantly: _If I don’t get to have you fully inside me then you don’t get to hear me moan in desperation_.

 

He leaned in and whispered in her ear the beginning of one of the poems from that book she had given him for Christmas the week before:

 

“ _I like it when you’re silent, for you seem as if you’re gone, and you hear me from afar, and my voice doesn’t touch you. It seems as if your eyes had flown away from you— it seems as if a kiss were sealing shut your mouth._ ”

 

She eased the pressure of her legs around him so she could rub herself against him the moment he began to speak.

 

“Your voice always touches me, Jack.” He was starting to lose his head, and control, and himself. He never stood a chance with her: he could tease her all he wanted but for as long as _she_ wanted. Once she decided their foreplay was over, it was over. The exact amount of friction, the right tone of voice, her tongue licking his jaw, and he would come crumbling down and give her whatever it was she craved, for there was nothing he craved more than _her_ pleasure. “Don’t you want to touch me, too? Don’t you want to come inside me?”

 

He thrust into her and they immediately set a rhythm. Phryne closed her eyes, an expression of ecstasy on her face. She met him thrust by thrust, but she remained silent. She was paying him back for making her wait, he knew it.

 

“ _Give me some music. Music, moody food of us that trade in love._ ” He quoted Shakespeare this time. It felt so good talking to her during sex, watching and feeling the effects his voice had on her. It was playful, and erotic, and he would have never known how much he enjoyed it if she hadn’t shown him verbal communication could heighten the pleasure and intensify both his and her arousal. By borrowing the words penned by others, he could express the way she made him feel and get her to talk about how he made her feel. It brought to it an emotional component that fit perfectly well with the physical one. It made their lovemaking profound and even more beautiful than it already was.

 

She moaned in his ear.

 

“Like that, Jack?”

 

He didn’t answer her and licked the sweat off her neck instead, the rotations of their hips a little bit more erratic.

 

“Say it in your own words” she asked in a high pitched voice.

 

He would lose it anytime now, but he was trying to hold himself together because he wanted her to come first. He couldn’t think coherently, let alone come up with something poetic that resembled Shakespeare’s work. But he wasn’t a poet, and Phryne didn’t care. She didn’t want to hear something clever and brilliant and worthy of becoming a classic. She just wanted to hear him expressing why he wanted her, why she turned him on, why she drove him crazy out of his mind with desire. He could be himself, he could always be himself with her, and whatever words he chose he knew they’d be enough to get them both what they wanted.

 

“I want you to moan while I fuck you because it sounds like music,” he panted. “It’s better than music. I can’t get enough of it, of you. I always want more.”

 

She let herself go, and so did he. He buried his face in the crook of her neck and they stayed like that until they stopped shaking. He eased his grip on her wrists and put his arms around her instead. Phryne cradled his head and lifted it up so their eyes would meet.

 

“I can’t believe how much I want to fuck you every single day until it’s New Year’s Eve again.”

 

She rendered him speechless. In his opinion, she was better at romantic overtures than any of the heroines he'd ever read about. The woman he was now helping out of her dress was real, that was why. She wasn't a work of fiction, she wasn't a figment of a writer's imagination, or a real goddess alter ego as the Cleopatra in Shakespeare's play. There was only one Phryne Fisher in the world and she was responsible of her own fate. She had written him into her life and there he was, trembling under her touch and the soft press of her lips on the skin of his chest as she undressed him, the words she had said after their orgasm still washing over him.

 

She had reminded him, in her own particular way and wording it so that there'd never be any doubt that Phryne Fisher had said it, that she wanted him and only him for the long haul. She wanted to fuck him every day of the year that had just started mere hours ago. He knew she loved him, knew she wanted him and that he made her hungrier the more he satisfied her, but he would always stand helpless before her every time she looked him in the eye and told him. She could repeat herself a million times, and he would come undone every single one of them.

 

“You sound like music when we make love, too.” She nibbled at his jaw as they got comfortable in the center of the bed. “Your voice sounds like music,” she kissed him hungrily “and your moans, and your pounding heart.”

 

He gathered her in his arms and they both lay there for a while.

 

“Tell me something about you I don't know" she said.

 

He pondered this for a moment. He supposed that she did know how free she made him feel, how amazing and liberating being with her was. How he felt like he could be himself all the time when he was with her, propriety be damned. She was full of life and she filled him with it, but of course she already knew that.

 

He kissed the top of her head.

 

“You have set me free,” he confessed “From myself, I suppose. From my depression, and my regrets, and my fears.” He couldn't see her face, but she was nuzzling his bare chest as she listened to him talk, and he could tell she was smiling. “In one opportunity, you told me that I was healing you.” He still couldn't think about that moment without his throat closing up and his heart beating out of control. It had been one of the most beautiful things anyone had ever told him, and coming from her it had meant the world. “You are healing me, too. I had chained myself to the worst things that have happened to me, and you’ve taught me how to break free.” She looked up at him and he kissed her softly on the lips. “You are full of life and you fill me with it. Thank you, Miss Fisher.”

 

She rested her head on his chest. Her voice sounded different when she spoke. He wouldn't tell her he noticed, he'd take the secret to his grave, but her tone gave away that she was holding back tears:

 

“I believe it's your turn to ask, detective inspector.”

 

“Tell me something about you I don't know” he said, tracing the curve of her body with his long fingers.

 

“There is somewhere I'd love to go with you. I've been thinking about it for some days now.” He listened to her carefully and didn't interrupt. “But I didn't know how to ask you because I want it to be a surprise.” She sat up and looked at him. One of her hands searched for one of his, and they locked their fingers. “Do you trust me, inspector?”

 

He nodded his head. He would go anywhere with her. He didn't know what she had in mind, but he trusted her completely. He'd let her take him to the end of the world, he'd follow her anywhere as long as she wanted him to. All she had to do was ask, and she was asking now, just like she had asked him in Melbourne. He didn't worry himself with doubts or questions, he didn't overthink it.

 

“Take me wherever you want, Phryne. You don't have to tell me where we’re going. Just lead the way, I'll go with you.”

 

She kissed him again, and soon the room was once again filled with the music of their lovemaking.

 

“Say it again, Jack, please” she asked him breathlessly, their bodies joined together and his hand in between them caressing her intimately.

 

“You are full of life and you fill me with it.”


	22. Chapter 22

**FOOL.** _O mistress mine, where are you roaming? O, stay and hear! Your true love’s coming, that can sing both high and low: trip no further, pretty sweeting. Journeys end in lovers meeting, every wise man’s son doth know._

 

_Twelfth Night (2.3.37-42)_

 

They arrived at their destination in mid-January, after a brief stay in Paris that was only a day and a half, but made them both remember how lucky they'd been to survive the horrors of a war they hoped the world never again saw the likes of. The ferry ride itself had been nice, but their memories of France were too tainted for the city to be more than a reminder of a time in their lives that sometimes they doubted it'd ever stop haunting them.

 

She would have only stayed long enough to hail a cab to go from the docks to the train station, as they had originally planned. When they couldn't get tickets for their final destination because they were all sold out, she felt the city she had run away from once was trying to tie her back down and force her to stay.

 

“We'll leave the day after tomorrow,” he had said, tucking the tickets away safely inside the pocket of his coat. “We can stroll around the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, perhaps grab something to eat for lunch.”

 

She had known Paris would be hard on him.

 

He had known it would be even harder on her.

 

“I escaped this hell once,” she’d leaned her head on his shoulder, her arms around one of his, as they walked down the street toward Notre Dame de Paris. It was a cold night, and Phryne had Jack's scarf around her long, beautiful neck. He was wearing a brand new one the color of tea with milk. She had bought it for him the day before they left London. “There is something infuriating about this city,” she'd continued “something that frustrates me. It's perpetually beautiful and will always be, but it's been forever ruined for me and I hate myself for hating her. Something so beautiful shouldn't be hated- it's screaming to be loved, adored. And yet I can't bring myself to love her. It frustrates me so much,” she ended her confession in a heartfelt whisper “that it makes me feel like screaming.”

 

They had stopped in the middle of one of the bridges that crosses the Seine. He had looked into her eyes, cupped her face in his warm, gloved hands and kissed her forehead, the tip of her nose, and then her red lips. He had then made a confession of his own:

 

“It’s maddening for me that I don't know if I want to scream at her for being so gorgeous in spite of everything that's happened to her, in her,” he’d caressed her cheeks, a furious pink because of the winter’s cold “or at me for not being able to put it all behind and giving her a second chance.”

 

“So just like me, Inspector, you're not sure if you hate to love her or if you love to hate her.”

 

They had embraced each other there, in the middle of that bridge at night, Notre Dame cathedral reflecting all its glory in the waters of a river that had heard and seen too much, just like the lady detective and her inspector had. But it had survived. The whole city of Paris had survived, as had they. The wars and the hunger and the tribulations and the worse human beings are capable of, both the city and the couple were survivors. It would never matter what people, or life itself, or fate, or circumstances did to any of the three of them: none of that would be enough to chip at their beauty.

 

He had told her so, and she had smiled against the crook of his neck, where her face had been hiding as he lovingly nestled her body to the side of his.

 

“You are quite the poet, Detective Inspector.” She’d lifted up her head to look at him, and then they had kissed as light snow started to fall. “You are a beautiful man, Jack.” Her voice had sounded serious, but full of adoration. “No scar, no war, nothing, absolutely nothing would ever make you less than my beautiful man.”

 

Phryne could have sworn that in that moment she had seen tears in his eyes, and heard him swallow the hard lump in his throat.

 

“Likewise, Miss Fisher. But I bet you already knew that.”

 

She had asked him to read to her some of the letters he had given her for her birthday almost a month ago, the ones he had penned for her during his journey from Australia to England. Their room in the hotel of rue Saint Séverin had a window, and they had bathed in the moonlight as they sat in the centre of the bed, facing each other, she straddling him.

 

“You are a poet in every city you go, Jack,” her whispered words had made his heart beat faster under the open palm she had pressed to his bare chest “You write love letters like they are poetry.”

 

He had silenced her praise with his kisses, but she had still found ways to praise him wordlessly with her body and her mouth.

 

The following morning they ate breakfast at a small delicatessen shop in the Latin Quartier. Afterwards, when they had been taking a walk around the city, they had found by accident a beautiful, small bookshop in rue de l’Odéon. The sign in golden letters read Shakespeare and Company.

 

“I've heard about this place.” Phryne had said. “It opened after the war. I think it used to be at rue Dupuytren before.”

 

“He is everywhere,” Jack had commented, a nod of the head in the direction of the golden letters to point at the Bard's’ name. “The magic of a classic.”

 

“Magic or mystery, Inspector?” she had asked teasingly.

 

“There's magic in mystery and there's mystery in magic,” had come his reply.

 

And so that day had been spent carefully examining the contents of every shelf, quoting favorite authors to one another, and picking up books for each other after Phryne had proposed it they played there the same game they had sometimes played at in London bookshops:

 

“Everything you buy for yourself has to be picked by me, and everything I buy for myself has to be picked by you.”

 

He had found a section that only had Shakespeare's works, and seeing the longing in his eyes she had chosen a lot of books from those shelves. He had found some beloved classic authors he remembered she had shown an interest in reading after he'd mentioned, so he chose those.

 

“And to think I was worried we would get bored during the train journey” he'd teased later that day while they walked hand in hand through the streets of a city that still made them achy, angered and frustrated, but that it was a lot more tolerable and even enjoyable in each other's company.

 

“Look, Jack,” she had called his attention to show him a small crowd gathered in a street near Ménilmontant, and they had approached it only to see a young girl (she couldn't have been older than her Jane), small height, skinny and with wobbly knees. She was clearly underweighted and her clothes looked like it had been mended over and over again.

 

Phryne wondered if that could have been her, had her father not inherited a title and that fortune. She tried not to think of what could have happened to Jane if she had remained in the streets had they not found her in that train, had she not decided to take her in, put a roof over her head, give her a home, and a family, and a future.

 

“Her voice is something else.” Jack had said.

 

They'd stayed there listening to the girl, her hand in his and the cold forgotten. The world had seemed to stop as their listened to that unique voice, so different and so haunted, so tragic, yet so impossibly beautiful.

 

Just like their Paris.

 

As the small crowd started to leave, Phryne had gotten near the girl, Jack lingering a little behind, watching her speak to the street singer.

 

“ _Merci, mademoiselle_ ” the little girl had offered her a smile when she had seen the ten French franc note Phryne gave her.  
  
" _Vous êtes les bienvenus, jeune fille, j'espère qu'un jour le monde vous écoutera chanter, vous le faites merveilleusement, vous avez l'air d'un moineau... C'est l'une des choses les plus magnifiques que j'ai écouté dans cette ville._ "

She had seen her show the note to another young girl that had been performing with her. Phryne had briefly thought that perhaps she was the girl's sister, but she'd decided not to dwell too much on the feelings awaken in her heart by the image of the two young ladies talking really fast and really excitedly in French.

 

“What did you say to her?” Jack had asked her as they resumed their walking hand in hand.

 

“That I hope the rest of the world gets to listen to her sing. That her voice is one of the most magnificent things I've heard in this city.”

 

“And what are the other magnificent things you've heard in this city, Miss Fisher?” he'd asked.

 

“You reading your letters to me, Inspector. You calming my fears and my frustration. Every single word you've said.” She'd stopped walking, and so had he, and they had embraced again in the middle of a street in a foreign place. “You. Just you.”

 

That night they had followed their ritual after making love:

 

“Tell me something about you I don't know, Jack.”

 

“You make me less scared, less scarred. In a city that reminds me of the atrocities so-called humans are capable of, you give me hope.” He'd kissed her spine, her neck, her shoulder blades as he spoke. “Tell me something about you I don't know, Phryne.”

 

“Paris never really felt like home to me. Not all memories are bad,” she'd elaborated as his fingertips grazed her ribs “but it never felt the way Melbourne does to me now. Nowhere really felt like home, all the places I've gone, all the cities I visited and the ones I've lived in, most of them were just that… places. They were interesting and charming and fun, but they weren't home. I feel at home with you. In Melbourne, and here in Paris,” and then she had taken his hand and placed it on her breast where he could feel her heartbeat “and in here. It’s frightened me sometimes, I won't say it hasn't, but most of the time it's wonderful. The home I searched for after the war and never found here, in this day and a half I finally found it with you. And the funny thing is, Detective Inspector, that this feeling of home will follow me to our next destination. I am sure of it. Even if it's a place I've never been to.”

 

They'd smiled bittersweetly at Paris when they boarded the train that morning. The wounds hadn't been completely healed and the damage would probably never be erased, but at least some of the city and their link to it had been redefined. Some things, some places, now had new meanings. They had been able to make new memories, good ones, in a place where they had both suffered greatly.

 

They'd found an empty compartment and spent the train ride reading the books they'd bought in Shakespeare and Company, sometimes in complete silence, while other times they had shared a quote or a passage aloud, as if continuing a conversation that had been flowing naturally between them.

 

They had had to go to Barcelona first, and then once there they had gotten train tickets to the capital city of Spain. They got to Madrid on a cold Wednesday afternoon. The sun was shining brightly and the air smelled fresh and clean.

 

The moment the train arrived at the station, before they got off, she looked at him and smiled.

 

“I think it's time I tell you why I asked you to come to Madrid with me, Jack.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Without @MissingMissFisher and her encouragement, I would not have written this chapter. 
> 
> I don't speak French, so the dialog in French was done with the help of my wonderful friend Lucía. For someone that has never watched an episode of MFMM in her life, she knows an awful lot about Jack and Phryne because she listens to me ramble on with a patience only rivalled by a monk's. 
> 
> There is an easter egg hidden somewhere in this chapter. Let me know if you've found it.


	23. Chapter 23

**CELIA.** I was too young that time to value her, but now I know her. If she be a traitor, why so am I. We still have slept together, rose at an instant, learned, played, eat together, and, wheresoe'er we went, like Juno’s swans still we went coupled and inseparable.

 

_As You Like It_ (1.3.66-71)

  
  
  


They sat on a bench in the railway station, their suitcases at their feet. It was a nice day, cold but sunny, and the passers-by speaking in fluent Spanish to each other as they came and went made for a lovely, rhythmic background noise. She wanted to let Madrid wash over them, admire its beauty from a simple bench, quiet and unobserved.

 

Jack followed her to sit on that bench like he would have followed her anywhere else in the world (and had their adventure not begun because of that? Everywhere she’d go he’d follow.) He didn’t push for answers as to why she had asked him to go there with her, he just put an arm around her shoulder and kissed the top of her head when she rested it on his arm. One ferry and two train rides later, they were finally in their destination, and he was still waiting for Phryne to open up and explain why she had wanted to visit Madrid with him. He hadn’t asked questions in London, he hadn’t asked questions during their journey, and he still wasn’t asking questions there. The love and patience that man had when it came to her! She had never seen anything like it.

 

They watched men, women and children going on about their days for a while, getting off and on the trains. They watched the peddlers and the shiners, the militaries and the working class, all of them walking up and down the sides of the train tracks. They watched them and were ignored in return. The couple stayed in content silence, a stolen peck of the lips every now and then, until she began to talk.

 

It had all started with a tin of biscuits, Phryne told him. She and Janey loved biscuits, a rare treat for them when they were children- their mother had been barely able to make ends meet, and even the simpler foods like soup or bread had been a luxury in the Collingwood Fisher household. Every time their Aunt Prudence and Uncle Edward traveled abroad on vacation they bought them a tin of biscuits each as a present. It had been one of several reasons why Phryne and Janey always looked forward to visiting their aunt and uncle, and their cousins Arthur and Guy, especially if they had recently been to Europe.

 

Mrs. Prudence Stanley hadn’t been able to help Margaret much after she had married Henry Fisher. But, she had done whatever little nice things to make her nieces happy that her drunken brother-in-law had had allowed her  to do. Buying them presents had been one of those thing.

 

At first Aunt Prudence had been very generous, selecting the most beautiful porcelain dolls, like she would have for her own daughters if she had had them. She had presented them with other toys, too, as well as clothes. But it hadn’t taken her long to discover the fate of her gifts to her nieces: Henry usually sold them all at second-hand markets so he could have money for drinking and games of cards. Margaret had never said a word to him, of course, and she’d insisted people didn’t stick their noses where they didn’t belong when it came to expressing their opinions on her husband. So Mrs. Stanley had ultimately decided to only buy them tins of biscuits and box of candy as presents, all things the girls could enjoy without fear of their father taking them away to profit from them.

 

“One time- I think I was eight and Janey was six- my aunt brought back from Europe these beautiful tins of biscuits that had watercolors in their lids. Mine had the Eiffel Tower, and Janey’s had the Main Square in Madrid. They call it _Plaza Mayor_ here,” she explained, the two words in Spanish sounding exquisite in her tongue and lips. “We always plagued Aunt Prudence with questions about the places she’d visited- how they were, and what were people like, and what was the food like, and what things had been her favorite.”

 

There was a certain nostalgia in her voice, and Jack couldn’t help but drop a couple of kisses on her forehead when she made a pause. She closed her eyes and breathed him in for a moment, nuzzling his neck before she resumed talking, her head now resting on his shoulder and his hand caressing softly the side of her arm.

 

“She told us all about the Main Square in Madrid, about the three-story buildings with its elegant balconies facing the _Plaza_ , and its several entries that looked like hidden passages, and the Bakery House that was four stories high and had a beautifully decorated facade. And the bronze statue of King Philip III right in the centre of the square! Janey thought he looked like a prince when Aunt Prudence showed us some pictures. I didn’t care for him much,” Phryne admitted “I thought it would have looked better if they’d had a statue of a queen.” They both laughed softly at that.

 

“Your sister really liked the tin of biscuits with the watercolor of the Main Square in Madrid, didn’t she?” Jack asked her, even though they both were sure he knew the answer to the question.

 

“She did,” said Phryne. “My aunt gave her some of the pictures they had taken to Australia with them after the trip. Janey loved how the Main Square looked, the buildings and the balconies- we really wanted to have a balcony when we were kids, we thought our pirate adventures would be much more interesting were a balcony involved.” She laughed again, a bittersweet laugh. “I really miss her,” she told him, her eyes watery. “I miss the things we shared, and the things we were robbed of. I miss all the things we didn’t get to do together…”

 

“Like visiting Madrid,” Jack said.

 

“Like visiting Madrid, yes.” Phryne took Jack’s hand in hers, and they intertwined their fingers. “And seeing the Main Square, the buildings with the balconies and the Bakery House with its hand painted facade.”

 

Tears were now slowly streaming down her face; Jack wiped them away with his thumbs, and she leaned into his hand to kiss his palm and pulse point. She whispered something against his skin, something that sounded like _Me too_.

 

“Me too, Phryne” he whispered back, locking their fingers once more.

 

“I will never stop missing her. I will never stop thinking of the things she missed on. The only things she knew first hand were poverty, filthy close, hunger, a drunken father and a mother so submissive she never stood up for her children. But, she knew there were better things out there. We both did. We had read about them in books and seen them in pictures, and one day we would experience them together. We would travel all around the world, and Madrid was going to be the first place we visited.”

 

“You never wanted to come here without her.” Phryne nodded her head at Jack's statement, lips pressed together because she didn't want to spill any more tears than she already had.

 

“It was her dream,” she said. “I got to see, and enjoy, and do all the things she had always longed for. I went on even more adventures than we could have imagined at that age.”

 

She took the handkerchief Jack was offering her and blew her nose with it, not caring what it looked or sounded like because she felt comfortable enough with him that she didn't mind if she wasn't anything associated with words like 'stunning’ or 'exquisite’ in that moment. He still thought that even with her nose a little reddened and her eyes a little swollen, as she blew her nose, she was the most elegant woman he had ever laid eyes on. Even in her weakness and vulnerability he found her strong and beautiful.

 

“I didn't think it would be fair to steal that one dream away from her.” Phryne confessed. “I have already done and seen everything she never would. I have the life she didn't get to have. I couldn't have Madrid, too. Madrid was Janey’s. I could take over the rest of the world if I wanted to, but Madrid was hers. It was her dream.”

 

“What changed now?” he asked.

 

She asked _him_ a question instead, as if she hadn't heard what he had said.

 

“Do you know why I like to fly, Jack?”

 

He pondered the question for a minute before he answered it.

 

“You are a free spirit. An adventuress. And you do have a fondness for reckless means of transportation, like cars that go too fast,” he reminded her, and she laughed. “So I suppose flying for you means freedom. The chance to spread your wings and fly away, go wherever you want. Nothing to anchor you or tie you down.”

 

She interrupted his musings.

 

“I like to fly because it's the closest I'll be to her again.”

 

He didn't say anything. He just looked at her, _observed_ her, his heart breaking for the pain that the woman he loved had had to carry on her shoulders since the loss of her little sister.

 

“I don't believe in heaven, I think.” Phryne elaborated. “I mean, at least not in the sense that religious people like Dot do. I'd like to think there is something more than ashes to ashes, dust to dust once our lives end. But I don't know if I imagine it to be something like the Catholic heaven, or in my case the Protestants’ heaven. Or any religion’s heaven, whatsoever. At one time I did, though. And so did my sister. She believed in heaven when she died. Contradictory as it sounds, when I'm up there I feel close to her.”

 

“I don't think it's a contradiction, Miss Fisher” he said.

 

“It is so, Inspector,” she smiled at him “but I can't say I mind.”

 

“Why now, Phryne?” he took the liberty to ask once more, knowing fully well that if she ignored the question or changed the subject again he would leave it be and not ask again. “Why Madrid now?”

 

“I had been thinking about it for some time,” she confessed. “Ever since that birthday party,” she didn't need to explain what birthday party she was referring to- he knew that she was talking about the one that had immediately followed the discovery of Janey’s remains. “I owe it to her to live my life to the hilt, right? So I started to think that maybe I should come here, make her dream come true. See Madrid, see the Main Square, do all the things I would have done with her.” She took a deep breath before she said: “I didn't want to do this alone, so I'd push the thought to the back of my head. But, I finally decided I wanted to do this with you. I can't do this with my sister, but I can and want to do this with you.”

 

She undid him, this woman, with the depths of her heart and the mysteries to her uniqueness. She undid him with her capacity for great, unstoppable love. With her loyalty and her immense ability to get in touch with her own emotions and those of the rest. She undid him with her love for her sister, strong and beautiful as it was their bond even in death. She undid him with the beauty of her soul. Everything she was had the gift to undo everything he was.

 

“Thank you” he said. “Thank you for wanting to share this with me.”

 

“She would have loved you, too,” she told him. “The little girl she was would have invited you to our pirate ship, she would have wanted to share our games and adventures with you. She would have been able to see that heart of yours that runs as deep as the Pacific Ocean. And I know that she'd be happy to know I'd go on this adventure, at last, with you as my partner.”

 

“You undo me, love.” The words were out of his mouth before he could think about them. He pulled her close and kissed them, not a single care that they were in a public space and that passers-by could be looking at the couple with the suitcases at their feet kissing on the bench. “I would have loved to know her,” he said, pressing his forehead to hers and cupping her face in his hands. “I definitely would have joined you in all your pirate adventures.” They laughed softly. “Thank you for this, Phryne. I value Janey’s dream as much as you do, dear.”

 

“I know you do, Jack.” She leaned into him and rubbed her nose against his. “I know you do.”

 


	24. Chapter 24

 

 **ROSALIND.** Oh, I know where you are. Nay, ’tis true. There was never anything so sudden but the fight of two rams and Caesar’s thrasonical brag of “I came, saw, and overcame.” For your brother and my sister no sooner met but they looked, no sooner looked but they loved, no sooner loved but they sighed, no sooner sighed but they asked one another the reason, no sooner knew the reason but they sought the remedy; and in these degrees have they made a pair of stairs to marriage, which they will climb incontinent, or else be incontinent before marriage. They are in the very wrath of love, and they will together. Clubs cannot part them.

 

_As You Like It (5.2.31-43)_

  
  
  


Their second morning in Madrid they found themselves in a passageway close to San Ginés church after their walk through the public square known as Gates of the Sun. Reddened faces and very cold noses, they were happy to find a café there, hidden like a pirate's treasure waiting to be discovered among the roughness of the sand. Its front doors and windows were painted in a dark shade of green, and the walls at the entrance were the color of daffodils.

 

“What do you think, Inspector?” she asked him, “Should we go in and have some hot chocolate and churros?”

 

It was crowded, more than any of them would have liked, but the smells were sweet, amazing and enticing, and the place had a warmth to it that reminded her of Dot’s laughter, and Mr. Butler’s coffee, and Jane’s smile, and _home_.

 

There were mirrors on the walls, and as they made themselves comfortable in their green velvet seats, she looked at their reflection. At another moment in her life, not much than a year before, she wouldn’t have considered any of _this_ possible. She wouldn’t have wanted it, either: the confidence, the intimacy, the deep commitment. Sharing herself as a whole with just one person, mind and body and heart and soul, all of her offered to another human being to have and to hold, to love and to cherish. She would have never imagined it would come to the day she’d make a conscious decision and opted for that, not when she had spent most of her adult life chasing spontaneity, freedom, variety.

 

And yet there she was, and when she observed her reflection and his in the mirror she couldn’t imagine being anywhere else, or in the company of anyone else. It had to be him. She was real, and there, and _his_ , but she still was herself, the bohemian socialité with a fervent passion for justice and freedom, and an insatiable thirst for adventure, and mystery, and pleasure, and wonder. The Collingwood girl that had known grief and loss, desperation and heartbreak at a young age, and that deep inside her heart was still the captain of a pirate ship made out of an old, dirty bathtub someone had thrown away. She was all of that. She was a million things, all of them by choice. She could be a million more if she chose so. And she had him, and she was happy that he had her.

 

“Penny for your thoughts, Miss Fisher” Jack whispered something upon noticing the pensive expression on her face.

 

Phryne laced her fingers with his over the marble table and smiled at him warmly.

 

“I am just basking in the notion that we are real, and here, and each other’s” she said. “A lot of the things I never thought I’d want, it turns out I want them, not in spite of everything else that I want  but _with_ everything else that I want. I can have you, and I can have myself, and it’s the safest I’ve ever felt.” She leaned closer to him to kiss the tip of his nose. “I want to be an adventuress, and a pirate girl, and a lady detective, and an airplane pilot, and oh so many things,” she sighed “and I also want to be with you, and you only.” She kissed the smile that appeared on his face. “Our partnership makes me happy. That’s what I was thinking about,” and then, with a playful, almost childish grin, she added: “I gave you my thoughts, now give me my penny.”

 

They were interrupted when a waiter placed on the table two white, ceramic mugs of hot, thick, dark and strong chocolate and a plate of freshly cooked churros.

 

“I think those are meant to be dunked in the hot chocolate,” Phryne commented, taking a long churro and splitting it in half.

 

“How can you do that?” Jack asked, smiling and in complete awe of her.

 

“How can I do what?” she answered his question with another one. “Split the churro in half? It’s rather easy, the look crispy but they’re soft…”

 

“No, no,” Jack said, taking a churro himself to dip in the hot chocolate. “I mean, how can you weave words until they form such beautiful sentences, say them, leave me breathless, and then go on about eating a churro as if you hadn’t just caused an earthquake in my heart.”

 

“An earthquake, Inspector?” she said, eyebrow raised, playful smile still in place.

 

“Like you don’t know it” he said, affectionately rubbing the back of her hand with his thumb. “You more than anyone know exactly the effect you have on me, Miss Fisher.”

 

“You have quite the effect on me too, Detective Inspector,” she whispered, her voice velvety and seductive but also full of emotion. And then, leaning back and speaking with a cheery note in her voice, she said: “Now eat up your churros, Jack, before I steal your share.”

 

They wandered arm in arm around the city after they left the café. Madrid was beautiful, full of noises and sounds and vivid colors, the smells of delicious food flooded the streets, and the foreign language with its peculiar accent was like music to their ears. By the time they made it back to their hotel suite that night, they were so tired and they feet so sore that they felt asleep within minutes after getting into bed, half of Phryne’s body draped on top of him and one of Jack’s arm curled protectively around her delicate frame, holding her close to him.

 

She woke up with a start at the dead of night. When she sat on the bed, Jack murmured something in his sleep, and for a moment she thought he was asking her if everything was alright. She didn’t want to disturb him, so she didn’t say anything and simply ran a hand through his messy hair until she was sure he was once again sleeping soundly. He looked so peaceful when he slept, calmer and younger and almost untouched by life’s tribulations and hardships. After tracing his jawline delicately with a fingertip, she got out of bed and went to find the stack of letters he had given her for her birthday and that she kept in her suitcase.

 

She wasn’t done reading them all yet. Some she had read by herself late at night while he had lay fast asleep by her side, like he was now. Others she had asked him to read to her, his voice full of love and emotion with every word he whispered in her ears, Phryne’s heart fluttering in anticipation to every beautiful sentence she had written for her, about her. Several she had read more than once, wanting to commit even the texture of the paper and every smudge of black ink to memory. She wanted to savour them, memorize them, let the meaning and the sentiment wash over her. Love letters Phryne never thought she’d enjoy, but his were different than the ones she had read in literature- they were more intimate, more powerful, an introspective look at his bare sound and heart. And they were _hers_. They were part of their story, a breathtakingly beautiful recollection of thoughts and reflections that he had penned with her as her muse.

 

Phryne found a favorite of hers, and took it back to bed with her to read until she could fall back asleep. She put an extra pillow against the headboard and rested her back there, and then she began to read.

 

  

 

> I close my eyes at night and let the memory of your voice wash over me. It makes me miss you more, crave you more. If I focus long enough I swear I can almost taste it. I can almost touch it. But the memory slips away and I am left alone missing you, craving you- perhaps more than I ever did before I invited it- you- into my thoughts.
> 
> There was this lad I met in the war. He was just a boy, a lot of soldiers were. Constable Collins reminds me of him. His name was Fred. I think about him from time to time, even after all these years. There are war memories, mostly the ones about the men I met in the trenches, that I finally buried somewhere in the back of my mind, some place that I don't visit as often as I used to. But Fred I cannot bury that easily. His facial features have become blurry with time, but I clearly remember his personality, his kind nature, his good manners. Perhaps I find myself thinking about him on occasion because his deepest fear was something I never quite understood back then, but I do understand it now. In fact, it's a fear I now experience myself.
> 
> Fred was scared he'd forget the voices of the people he loved most: his mother’s, his little sister’s, his fiance’s. He had got engaged before leaving for France. The girl had promised to wait for him. He talked about her, and wrote her letters, and kept a picture she had given him between the pages of a Jane Austen novel. I can't remember the girl's name, but I do remember how Fred's eyes lit up every time he mentioned her. I don't think I ever had that with my former wife, the kind of adoration that makes you weak in the knees and bends you over at its mercy. I thought Fred was too young, too full of hope and illusion, and that like the rest of us he desperately needed a silver lining, so he clinged to his love for that girl and let his fear of not hearing her voice ever again (and eventually forgetting it) be his motivation to fight and survive. But I never considered that that fear could be real for itself. There were worse, more dangerous things to be scared of in the war, and facing them and admitting they made you afraid was harder for some than it was for others. Fred was young, and he had dreams, and he would have never imagined that anything could step on them until the war happened and he found himself there. We all supposed that his irrational fear of forgetting his fiance's voice was like a coping mechanism for him: it probably was easier to trick yourself into believing nothing would ever be as terrible as forgetting the voice of someone you loved. He was channeling all his other fears, the real ones, into that. Or so I thought at the time.
> 
> I know better now. Fred's fear wasn't a way to trick himself into believing there was nothing as terrifying out there as forgetting his beloved girl's voice, and that he would be fine no matter what happened as long as that didn't happen. That fear was real for him because he was in love. He craved her- her eyes, her voice, her lips, her smell- and he couldn't have her, he didn't know when he would see her again (or if he'd see her again at all), and whatever little memories of her he had helped him against the unbearable pain that being without her caused him. It was what nourished his heart and gave him hope. I couldn't understand this until many years later when I found myself suffering from the same form of fear. It was after I fell in love with you.
> 
> You've changed my views on everything, Phryne. You make me see things under a different light- yours . The world- my world - redefines itself constantly under the light that you shine on it. Loving you has simplified many riddles, but it has made others even harder to solve. I’m scared of forgetting the sound of your voice like that kid in the trenches was once. I know it’s irrational, but I just can’t help myself. I crave your voice as much as I crave your kisses and your skin, and in this craving I get lost and like a child I’m scared. Scared because I don’t know exactly when I’ll see you again. Scared because human memory is something so fragile, so easy to tamper with. Scared because my name has never sounded so beautiful as when you say it, and if I don’t get to hear it again soon then I’m afraid I’ll lose myself to madness. The meanings of life, and  love, and fear, and friendship, they no longer are what they once were for me. You turned my head upside-down, darling.
> 
> I first felt like this during the time we spent apart after the Gerty Haynes case. I acted like a coward and walked away from you. I thought distance would be good, that it’d help me forget. The problem was I didn’t want to forget you. I didn’t want to risk my heart, but I couldn’t push you to the back of my mind either. I couldn’t pretend I’d never met you, or that I hadn’t fallen in love with you. I went to your house that night to tell you I was giving you up, and then I found myself unwilling to let the memory of you go. I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t forget you. I didn’t want to, and it scared me that if I never saw you again then one day I would eventually start to forget. And then I remembered Fred and what I had mistaken for an irrational fear. I was scared I’d forget your face, and your laughter, and your long eyelashes, and the color of your skin, and the red of your lips, and the sound of your voice.
> 
> Once that fear settled in, it became constant. Even after we started working together again (it is, after all, what we do best) the fear wouldn’t disappear. I believe it will be with me forever. I believe this is a suffering all men in love must endure. When I learned you were flying your father to England, that fear intensified. I don’t want to be without you. I remember how life was before I met you, and I don’t want to go back to that. And what if you stayed in England for several months, maybe even several years? What if I started to forget?
> 
> The night of Dot and Hugh’s wedding, when we looked up at the sky and we saw that shooting star, I made a wish. I wish that you always find happiness. Everywhere. Anywhere. I want you to be happy, Phryne. Loving you has also redefined the meaning of happiness for me: I am happy if you are. I would never want anything else than that. I lay awake in the darkness thinking about you afterwards, thinking about the implications of the wish I made upon that star. I couldn’t sleep. Fear was consuming me. You hadn’t even left Australia and I was already missing you. I remembered Fred, I remembered how he talked about his fiance and how he prayed every night that he’d dream of the time they had shared before the war so he would not forget how her voice sounded, how her eyes sparkled, how her laughter made him feel full of life.
> 
> And then I understood why the fear was so irrational: you can’t forget someone you’ve loved so deeply, someone that’s touched your heart and soul and changed your life for the better. My fear of forgetting you, Phryne, your taste and your lips and your nose and your smile and your voice, is irrational because you are unforgettable. Even if time passes and I never see you again (my heart aches at the thought), even if in twenty years I don’t remember the exact color of your hair black as raven feathers, or the melody of your laughter, or the smell of your French perfume, I will always remember your warmth, your wit, your thirst for justice, your sense of humor. And even if some day we part and many years later I can’t recall the sound of your voice (I hope, my love, that such thing never happens) I will always recall the sound of your happiness and everything that makes you who you are. Everything that makes you whom I love.
> 
> I don’t know if I’ll ever show you these letters. They are just random lines about my feelings. They are just random thoughts. I don’t know if it makes sense at all. I just know they make sense to me. The kind of wonderful sense one discovers when one falls in love. Maybe nobody else would understand these paragraphs, just like all those years ago I didn’t understand Fred’s fear. I think that girl made him see the world through different perspectives. It all made sense to him in ways I couldn’t know because I hadn’t met you yet. I hadn’t fallen for you yet. Perhaps one day I will give you all these letters. Perhaps you’ll read them, perhaps you won’t. There’s a chance you’ll understand. There is also a chance that you will not understand, and that doesn’t scare me. I am fine with all the possibilities- and that is also something I learned from loving you, Phryne. You’ve made me more afraid, you’ve made me less afraid. Loving you is the strangest thing that has ever happened to me. It also is the most wonderful.
> 
> I’ll go to sleep now, love. I need to dream of you: your red lips, your smile, your laughter, your warmth, your eyes, your voice. I’ll dream of London and the days that are yet to come. I’ll dream of holding you in the night and waking up next to you in the mornings, for I crave the simplicity of laying by your side as much as I crave making love to you.
> 
> I love you all, Phryne. And no matter what happens with us, no matter where life takes us, I know that I will always remember the sound of your beautiful, generous heart.

 

 _How deep and poetic can the heart of this man be?_ , she wondered as she placed the letter on the nightstand and watched over his sleeping form. At the café he had told her that she had the ability to render him breathless and make his heart shake like in the aftermath of an earthquake by just picking words and weaving them into sentences- couldn’t he see that he had the same ability when it came to her?

“You must have been a writer in another life, Jack Robinson,” she murmured to herself as she once more rested her head on his chest, ready to let the sound of his breathing lull her back to sleep.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Lazy early morning lovemaking was followed by breakfast in bed the next day. She took so much pleasure in seeing Jack so relaxed, his hair disheveled after her hands had been running through it impatiently and incessantly as he pleased her with his mouth, his face still unshaven. Phryne had rarely gotten to see him like that in Melbourne, and she hoped it wouldn’t go away once they returned to Australia. This newfound intimacy and the changes in the nature of their relationship allowed her to see a side to him that she suspected was reserved for her eyes only. She loved seeing him bask in the afterglow of their lovemaking, loved seeing the effects her adoration had on him. Ever since he had arrived in London, Phryne had been peeling all the layers that there were to her detective inspector, and she couldn’t be more thankful that he was sharing this all with her.

She had been wanting to ask him about the soldier he mentioned in his letter ever since she had first read it by herself, when they were still in London. She had read it again twice more while in England, and then a fourth time the previous night, and she still hadn’t decided whether it would be good to ask him about Fred or not. He spoke freely and naturally of the war and its horrors in the paper, but then again maybe it was because pen and paper have the beautiful quality of listening without interrupting, no questions asked, no explanations needed, no expectations.The writer was in total control of his confidences, secrets and fears as he poured them all down there until he felt like he needed to stop, until he couldn’t take it any longer and decided to write a full stop, fold the paper in two and tuck it away safely.

She didn’t know whether he’d want to discuss the contents of his letters with her face to face. They had read some of them together (he had read them to her), but after reaching the final lines there hadn’t been much talking: after listening to his words so full of heavy emotions- both for her and for the terrible things that had happened to him in the past- the need for physical contact, reassurance that they were _real and there and each other’s,_ had been greater than anything else. Everything they had had to express at the time, they had done so by making love until they were both breathless and sedated by the consequences of ecstasy.

Now it was different, as they lay spent on the bed, a tray with tea and toast between them, and the cloudy Madrid sky hidden behind the curtains of the window of their hotel bedroom. They loved to start their days like this: sex, and breakfast in bed, and perhaps more sex ( _most of the times more sex_ ), and then a walk around the city to discover its secrets and wonders. She didn’t want to risk ruin it by asking about something that could upset him or make him feel bad.

But then again, he wasn’t René, that would get upset (and violent, very violent) if she said or did what he considered was the wrong thing. He wasn’t like her father, either. Her father would have never allowed her to ask questions as a kid- she did ask them anyway, and every single time she ended up locked up in the cupboard for hours, some times even a whole day if her father had been drunk and upset enough.

She could talk to Jack about anything, she could ask anything, and she knew it. He would answer truthfully, or he would tell her that he wasn’t ready to talk about it, that he’d rather they talked about it in another opportunity, and she would understand. This was the man she could talk to about absolutely anything she could think of, the man that would never judge her or ask her to change or pretend that she gave herself up.

 

And that was one of the reasons why she knew everything between them would be all right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am lucky to have @MissingMissFisher as my editor, and as always I want to make the time to thank her for being such an amazing editor and friend.
> 
> The letter from Jack that Phryne reads in this chapter is one of the chapters in the second story in the Definition of Madness series, "Black holes and expectations".


	25. Chapter 25

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> @MissingMissFisher did, as always, a lovely job of proofreading this.

**POLONIUS.** This above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.

 

_Hamlet (1.3.79-81)_

  


Mrs. Dorothy Collins woke up very early every day, as did her husband, Constable Hugh Collins who was with the City South Police Station. The couple enjoyed having breakfast together every morning before he left for the station and she for the _Women’s Choice_ office on the days she had to go there instead of just writing from home. This particular March day wasn’t one of those, so after kissing her husband goodbye on the cheek and wishing him a good journey to work, Mrs. Collins made her way back to the kitchen to clear off the tables of their breakfast things and brew a new pot of tea for herself to drink while she wrote.

 

The first three installments of her mystery serial, _The case of the man that died in the bathroom_ , had aroused the enthusiasm and interest of the readers, and the letters she had been getting with their reactions had been both fun to read and also an encouragement for her to write more. She was due to hand in the fourth and fifth installment to Mrs.Charlesworth before the end of the week, since  _Women’s Choice_ next edition would offer their readers not one, but two new fascicles of their favorite mystery murder.

 

Dorothy’s idea to start writing a work of narrative fiction to accompany the magazine had been met by Mrs.Charlesworth with the same enthusiasm and interest that now its readers showed. She had been doing exceptionally well writing advice, and she had received a positive response when she had begun writing her own column, so the editor thought it’d be natural to include this new addition within the publication. _Is it going to be a new fairies story?_ Mrs. Charlesworth had asked, in the hopes that Dot’s literary work would fill in the hole Miss Lavender’s writing had left after her passing. _Well, not exactly, Miss,_ had been Dot’s answer, _I want to write mystery murders, Miss._

 

And so the following week, Mrs. Regina Charlesworth had received a typewritten copy of the first installment of a story told from the point of view of Miss Mary Joseph, a young maid that works at a wealthy couple’s house until one fine morning Mrs. Ackermann finds Mr. Ackermann dead on the bathroom floor and all the evidence seems to point to poor Miss Joseph. The other main characters were introduced in the first installment, of course: Detective Inspector Robin Jackson and Constable Colin Hughman, whom are called to the crime scene to investigate the murder, and Miss Psyche Richmond, Mrs. Ackermann’s bohemian, well-traveled and well-read friend that happened to be visiting from London and decided to help poor Miss Joseph prove her innocence.

 

“Brilliant!” Mrs. Charlesworth had exclaimed when she’d finished reading while a nervous Dorothy waited, sitting in silent on the couch in the editor’s office. “It’s brilliant, you clever girl!”

 

“Oh, do you truly think so, Mrs. Charlesworth?” Dot has asked, her eyes shining with pride and emotion.

 

“Of course I do!”

 

“There will be romance, too,” Dot had quickly added. “Miss Joseph and Constable Hughman will fall in love, and so will Miss Richmond and the inspector.”

 

“Oh, you clever, clever girl!” Mrs. Charlesworth had exclaimed again.

 

Dorothy was very happy with her incipient writing career. She found that writing about things she had experienced beforehand and twisting them a little was a very fun, very easy thing to do. She was true to herself and to how she saw the world when she wrote from the point of view of Miss Mary Joseph’s, and the detective skills she had picked up on in her time working as Miss Fisher’s made came in handy to plot the mystery. Her husband had been a dear, helping her by explaining police procedure to her and offering her advice on the lines of dialog between policemen so they would sound real. She was so proud of herself and the work she was doing! She couldn’t believe she had found something that she enjoyed more than baking for the church sale! But she had. Writing was now her favorite thing in the world, and she could hardly wait to sit every day in front of the typing machine to make the words appear on the paper, the black ink bringing to life the ideas that were weaved in that head of hers.

 

“Oh, how I wish Miss Fisher was here to see me!” Dot thought that day near lunchtime, as she was writing the final sentences of the installment she had been working on four hours straight. The very neat notes she always made to help herself elabore the plot and the characters development were at one side, and the kettle and teacup in its saucer (now both of them empty) were at the other. It had been a very productive writing session, but one look at the clock told Dot that it was time to prepare her basket with some sandwiches and finger food to take to the station. Hugh had a lot under his belt now, with the promotion and all, and he had quite the appetite.

 

She loved enjoying lunch at City South with her husband, and she couldn’t wait to write a scene she had had in her head since she’d written the first interaction between Miss Joseph and Constable Hughman at the top of the stairs in the Ackermann’s housestate: Miss Joseph, staying at Miss Richmond’s lovely house after being sacked by Mrs. Ackermann, would be visiting the police station with her new friend to discuss some newly found evidence with Inspector Jackson, and then Constable Hughman would praise the sandwiches Miss Joseph had made and that the women had brought along with them.

 

Dorothy cleared away her things from the kitchen table - she would soon have to think of making herself a workplace somewhere else in the house, since answering advice-seeking letters was one thing, but doing so _and_ writing a column _and_ being the writer of a serial took up much more space. Or perhaps she could start working every day at the _Women’s Choice_ office, perhaps just a few hours on the mornings she usually worked from home. She would have to talk to Hugh about it, of course, but all of a sudden the idea of going into the magazine’s office every day and keeping her work things there seemed rather appealing.

 

She was musing over these thoughts when she went to pick up the mail before getting everything ready to leave for the station with her and Hugh’s lunch. A bright smile appeared on her face when she realized they had a telegram from Miss Fisher and Inspector Robinson! The last she had heard from them, they had been visiting Spain and then they would make their way back to London. As she returned inside the house and opened the envelope, she wondered what her muses for Miss Richmond and Inspector Jackson were up to now.

 

The wire they had sent read:

 

DEAREST DOT AND HUGH STOP WE ARE SAFELY BACK IN ENGLAND STOP WE HAVE DECIDED TO STAY FOR ONE MORE MONTH STOP WE WILL BE BACK IN MELBOURNE BY APRIL 27TH STOP HOPE YOU ARE WELL STOP READ THE FIRST INSTALLMENT OF YOUR SERIAL AND LOVED IT STOP VERY PROUD OF YOU STOP

 

Miss Dorothy Collin’s eyes lit up, and a wide smile appeared on her beautiful face. Miss Fisher and the inspector were going back home soon! She’d see her Miss again, her Miss that was always so encouraging and inspired her to be a better version of herself, happier and braver than she’d ever dared to dream of becoming!

 

 _Miss Fisher and the detective are coming home. And they read my installment and I make them proud!_ she thought, her eyes shinning with tears now.

 

For the young wife, detective’s assistant, and now mystery murder writer, April 27th couldn’t come fast enough.

 


	26. Chapter 26

**BRUTUS.** There are no tricks in plain and simple faith.

 

_Julius Caesar (4.2.23)_

  
  


“Tell me something about you I don’t know.”

 

The question was asked by the Honourable Phryne Fisher to the only man she had taken as a lover for the past couple of months. It had become some sort of game, a ritualistic one if you will, to ask one another questions while they basked in the aftermath of their lovemaking, between bouts of sexual pleasure. Verbal communication mingled with non-verbal, that kind that only consisted of the murmur of skin rubbing against skin, nails digging into the flesh, and throaty moans. And for someone who hated routine and avoided it like the plague, the woman that now lay atop her lover’s bare chest found this ritual to be as pleasurable and fascinating as what preceded it between the sheets.

 

“I doubt there is a single thing you don’t know about me already,” Jack Robinson whispered in her ear as he ran his finger through the bob of silky hair black as raven feathers. She nuzzled her face in the crook of his neck and mewled very cat-like, slightly moving her body so that her still wet core brushed gently against his half-hardening cock.

 

When he tried to grab her hips to steady her and help her sink down onto him, she batted her eyelashes at him playfully and, with a smirk on her face, moved so that she was straddling one of his legs. Leaning forward so that her mouth was right next to his ear, she whispered:

 

“I’ll ride you again until you’re senseless if you tell me something I don’t know about you,” her teasing tactic was meant by one of his own when he took their current position to his advantage and licked a hot stripe down her throat.

 

“Do you think there could still be things that you don’t know about me, Miss Fisher?” he asked.

 

“Of course I do, Inspector,” she said confidently, her fingers caressing the inner side of his tight.

 

“Would you be disappointed if I told you that you’re wrong? That you’ve peeled off all of the layers that there are to me? That there isn’t any more to learn about me?”

 

She stopped her ministrations and looked at him in the eyes, recognizing that there was something different in them now. Gone from his face was the teasing expression, and the eyes that had been shining with lust minutes before now seemed rather opaque (but she still found them, and all of him, _beautiful_ ). Phryne knew what had brought these sudden changes about.

 

“Of course I wouldn’t, Jack,” she palmed his cheek with her hand, so small in comparison to the one he brought up to caress her knuckles with the gentleness that she knew so well. “You could never disappoint me. Please, don’t even think that. You are the best man I know. And if I already know all that there is to you, then I couldn’t be happier because everything I know about I love.”

 

He propped himself on his elbows and rested his back against the headboard, his arms open so she could lay her body on his chest again and let him cradle her in them. He kissed the top of her head and said:

 

“I was just teasing you, you know. When I said that you already knew everything...”

 

“I know, Jack. And even if it were true,” she said “I would still want you the same. You do know that, do you?” she asked him, a hint of doubt barely perceptible in her tone of voice. She turned around, sat up and straddled him once more so she could look him in the eye again. “You do know that you make me want you in ways I never even thought possible before, right? You make hungry the most you satisfy” she added, her lips curved in half a smile.

 

“You must forgive me, Phryne,” he ran a hand up and down her bare back, lightly tracing her spine “for having these shadows of a doubt sometimes. It’s not your fault, of course, dear” he continued “It’s just that there are moments in which, if just only for a second, I feel like perhaps one day I truly will run out of things to offer you, stories to tell you, and how will I be deserving of you then, when I am no longer a mystery to solve? How will I be deserving of the woman that is a exotic, never ending mystery in herself?” She said nothing, not because she didn't haven't anything to say but because she knew he wasn't done talking yet. “It just occurred to me that one day you could ask me our question,” Phryne smiled when he called the question _theirs_ , and so did he, a little “and I may not have any more new answers to give you.”

 

“I don't agree with you, Jack.” She took one of his hands in hers and began tracing the lines of his palm with her fingers while she talked. “We are constantly rediscovering ourselves, you know? I didn't know half the things I now know about me a couple of years ago. Many of the answers I have given you to our question,” they shared one more smile “I couldn't have given you if we have met, say, right after the war ended, or right after I left France. The same could be said about you, of course. You weren't the same before your divorce, or after. You aren't the same now after our time in Europe, I suppose, and you won't be the same man you are tonight the day the ship docks in Melbourne. I won't be the same, either. We'll discover new things, so there will be more answers, while others that we already think that we have will change partially or even drastically, perhaps. Who knows?” She smiled at him again, this time it was more like a grin. “That is the fun thing about life, Jack: you can't know today what you'll learn tomorrow. I'd bet my airplane and my Hispano-Suiza that I can't even imagine half the things I will have learned about myself in a year's time. Nothing ever stays the same. We people don't, either. And if we turn out to be the exception to the rule and we don't learn a new single thing about each other ever again from this night forward,” she added, her tone playful “then we will just have to change the question we ask each other after we make love.”

 

She leaned forward and kissed the tip of his noise, earning a smile from him.

 

“I learned a new thing just right now, dear” Jack said, his left hand tucking Phryne’s hair behind her ear.

 

“Did you?” He nodded his head yes. “And what is it?”

 

“I learned that you are the most extraordinary woman in the world,” he let his hand roam down the front of her body, the tip of his fingers slightly teasing her bare breasts, her stomach, and then her wet folds “and I am one lucky bastard.”

 

“An endless source of mystery, that is what you are Jack Robinson” her breath was becoming elaborated as he lifted her hips an inch off him so he could let one finger, then another one slip inside of her. “You,” she began, rotating her fingers to help him find the rhythm she was seeking for “make me feel,” she moaned a little, her eyes fixed on his as he played her clit like he would the keys of the piano in her parlour “things I never imagined I would ever feel.”

 

He stated at her in awe as she moved onto his fingers, mesmerized by her wisdom and her beauty, overwhelmed by the intense desire that he felt pulsing every time he watched her bring herself to orgasm like that: his fingers curling inside her while she moved around them. He was speechless, like he usually was thanks to this bohemian goddess that so happened to want him as desperately and as much as he wanted her, unbelievable as that may have seemed to him or to anyone less than six months ago. If anyone had told him that one fine March evening he would find himself in bed with Miss Fisher, in a hotel suite in London, fucking her with his fingers for what surely was the thousandth time, he would have recommended that they had their mental health checked.

 

But oh, she wanted him! And how she wanted him. She proved time and again that she did, and even when the glimpse of a doubt threatened him she took care of him and his fears, reassuring him that he was so much more than he took credit for, chasing away the shadows of his past before they could warm over his heart. The woman that was now liking his fingers that were coated with the hot, sticky evidence of her arousal _loved_ him. She was positive that he would remain interesting to her, that he would keep on making her hungrier the more he satisfied her, both physically and emotionally. For someone that claimed not to have faith in any higher power, _she had faith in them._ And she constantly reminded him of the reasons why he did, too.

 

They had made plans to return to Melbourne soon; by the end of April they would have been back in Australia. She had teared up a little after reading Mrs. Collins's first installments of a serial the newlywed was writing for _Women's Choice_ magazine, and she had admitted to missing them all: her companion, the cabbies, Mr. Butler, Constable Collins, and even her aunt (to whom he knew she wrote letters quite frequently, albeit short and pretty much about family news and the weather.)

 

“Will you come back home with me, Jack?” Phryne had asked him as they walked hand in hand down Oxford Street a couple of days after returning from Spain.

 

He had wanted to tell her that home to him was wherever she was, but Jack had felt that words could be spared between him and Phryne, for she knew very well that _she was his home._ He had cupped her face with his gloved hands and kissed her, and then they had procured the tickets to a ship that was set to dock in Australia by April 27th.

 

She had asked him to follow her, and then after their wonderful time together in the continent she had asked him to go back home with her. As if he could ever wish to be anywhere else but where she was!

 

The more time they spent together, the more he fell in love with her. Even when he didn’t think it was possible to adore her more, somehow by the end of every day he found himself even deeper into the relationship they had built based on friendship, and respect, and loyalty, and trust. She made him more terrified than anything in the world (and he was a policeman, and he had been a soldier in the Great War!) and at the same time she calmed him like no other thing ever could. It was as contradictory as it was glorious and beautiful. They were just like her, the feelings she gave him, a whirlwind of color and sensation that always left his head spinning, his heart throbbing, his soul wanting more and more.

 

He captured her mouth with kiss, tugged at her lips with his teeth, and kissed her. Every time he didn’t know what to say to express all of that she made him feel, he often kissed her. When doubts threatened him, he kissed her. When he was scared, when his scars hurt, when the flashbacks haunted him, he kissed her. And it always calmed him, and she always soothed him, and whatever reasons he had to believe that one day he may not have answers to her questions disappeared and were replaced by the knowledge that, if one day he ran out of answers (something he now understood was unlikely to happen because, like Phryne had said, they were both constantly rediscovering themselves and the whole world, and she was right about that), then she was willing to ask him new questions.

 

“You wonderful man, you have made me discover so many things about myself” she said against his mouth in between kisses.

 

“So have you, Miss Fisher” Jack said, nuzzling her cheek. “Do you want me to tell you something about me you don't know?” He didn't wait for Phryne to nod her head, for he continued: “You make me more terrified than anyone or anything else in this world, and you make me less terrified than anyone or anything else. Tell me, how can both be possible, my beautiful enchantress? I'm spellbound by you.”

 

She had been told that many times, he knew, by many men and under very different circumstances. Some had been enchanted by her haunting looks, her beauty and the pleasure they found when they buried their faces or themselves between her legs. Others, the fewer, had been fascinated by her spirit, her views on life and the tales of her many adventures. All of them had been rejected, their offers gently turned down and the same speech repeated to them all: she would never tie herself to anyone, she would never make any promises unless they were to herself, for those were the only ones she knew she'd follow through, and if she ultimately decided that she didn't want to then her choices wouldn't be disappointing or hurting anyone.

 

He had been the exception to the rule, though. He hadn't asked for promises. He hadn't begged for her undivided attention. He hadn't demanded a thing, and the moment she had made the decision to- literally as much metaphorically- to take off and fly away, he hadn't uttered a single word to stop her plans. He had merely made himself present at the airfield to say farewell to her because he wouldn't have forgiven himself had he chosen differently. That had been his true romantic overture: he loved her and respected her and would never clip her wings, would never believe himself to have any right to express an opinion on what she did or didn't do. He loved her and he was willing to let her go because she had never been his to keep. She had never been anyone's. He had loved her for her freedom, who was he to expect her to give that up?

 

But she had asked him to follow her. She had asked him to go after her. That kiss they had shared and that he had thought would be a farewell had really been a promise from her, an invitation to join her in her adventurous life across the ocean. In that very moment that for a second had felt like an end when in reality it had been a beginning, even then at the time she had shown faith in them.

 

And come hell or high water, he knew that once they would have returned home in a couple of weeks and real life- that in which they solved murders together, and he was an officer of the law, and she was a wealthy socialité with a nobiliary title and a bohemian, adventurous lifestyle that contrasted so much with the one he’d always been used to- that faith would still be there. And, it was more than he ever thought he’d be able to ask for from anyone in this life.

 

“I was thinking,” she said, intertwining her fingers with his “that we could visit Jane before we left. In her last letter she mentioned that she’d have some free time at the beginning of April, and I thought that it would be nice to spend Easter with her in southern France. Or,” she kept on talking “I could ask her to come here during Easter break. I think she’d like London very much.”

 

“I would love to have her spend some time with us, Phryne,” he said. “I know how much you care for that girl, and how much you miss her. It would be a shame not to get to spend some time with her. If you want to go visit her by yourself, I wouldn’t mind,” he assured her. “The same goes if you wished to spend some time alone with her here in London. I wouldn’t want to intrude. I don’t want you to feel like you’re obligated to have me with you the whole time. I’d understand if you wanted to have one on one time with Jane.”

 

“I do want you to spend time with us, Jack,” she said. “She knows you are here visiting. Jane likes you, and I think she would be delighted to know that our partnership has become so much more and that we are emotionally involved with one another- although I believe that she suspects it wasn’t exactly a coincidence that we traveled to Europe almost at the same time.” They both laughed.  

 

“She thinks highly of you, Detective Inspector,” she said with a smile that he returned with one of his own. “And I like that she does so. I like that she can see what a good man you are. She also shares a lot of your interests, she likes books and gardening and collecting coins, and I sent her a bike as a Christmas present because she wanted one very much. I think it will be very good for her to have you around, if you wish so.”

 

He knew how important this was for her, how important the young girl was for her, and he was both touched and honoured that she was telling him all of these things. That she considered him a potential good influence on the lovely girl she had taken as her protegee, the lovely girl whose life she had changed the moment she had so selflessly offered her a home and a future. Miss Jane Ross was part of her family, and Phryne loved her. How could he not want to spend time with them, sharing his passion for literature and gardening, and coin collecting and bikes? He knew he’d love every minute he’d spend with them, whether in London or in the city where Jane was currently completing her abroad education.

 

“Of course I do, Phryne.”

 

“It makes me very glad to hear that, Inspector,” she said, kissing him on the lips. And then she added: “I’ll send Jane a wire tomorrow and ask her if she’d rather come to London or have us visit her in France.”

 

Phryne then rested her head on his chest and closed her eyes as he ran his hands up and down her back.

 

“You still haven’t told me something about you I don’t know,” he told her before she had the chance to drift off to sleep.

 

“Mmmh?”

 

“I told you that you terrified me and made me less terrified all at the same time,” he explained “but you didn’t tell me anything about you that I don’t know yet, and,” Jack said, gently rubbing his thumb on her side “I think it is only fair that you answer the question: tell me something about you I don’t know.”

 

She looked up at him and smiled teasingly:

 

“Oh, but I already held my end of the deal, Inspector,” she said. “I already told you something about me you didn’t know.”

 

He frowned at her, but she didn’t let up the meaning behind her words.

 

“You can figure it out. You are more than capable, Inspector.”

 

And after yawning, she nuzzled his bare chest and cuddled by his side to let sleep claim her, leaving Jack Robinson pondering what she had tried to tell him. When a few minutes later he did understand what it was about her that he hadn’t known before and she had told him, he let sleep claim him as a well, a smile on his lip and his heart that ran as deep as the Pacific Ocean beating contently against the ear that she had pressed on his warm skin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> @MissingMissFisher proofread this chapter. I couldn't love her more. Oh, wait, yes: I can! She always gives me new reasons to love her more! She's a wonderful editor and an even better friend!


	27. Chapter 27

**VALENTINE.** Cease to persuade, my loving Proteus: home-keeping youth have ever homely wits. Were't not affection chains thy tender days to the sweet glances of thy honour'd love, I rather would entreat thy company to see the wonders of the world abroad, than, living dully sluggardized at home, wear out thy youth with shapeless idleness. But since thou lovest, love still and thrive therein, even as I would when I to love begin.

  


_Two Gentlemen of Verona (1.1.1-10)_

  


At fifteen years old, Miss Jane Ross knew a couple of things very certainly. First of all, whether a person was born into prosperity or poverty didn’t limit or define the things they could do with their life, being in favor of diversity was an important point as much as it was an advantage. Secondly, even if it was, without a hint of a doubt, a positive experience, an academic education was never to be placed above moral values neither gave someone that had had access to it the right to consider themselves above those that hadn’t.

 

The daughter of a mentally ill mother and an unknown father, Jane’s childhood hadn’t been easy. She had known hunger and exploitation, and when her mother’s condition had taken a turn for the worst she’d had to be a beggar and a thief in order to survive. Cruelty and greed, aggressiveness and lack of love were not foreign to her then, for the man that owned the hellish boarding house where she’d lived hadn’t been one to hesitate: brutal beatings had been common currency there if the girls failed to turn in a good amount of money, whether it be cash or stolen goods. She had been on the receiving end of those beatings plenty of times- on occasion as punishment for stepping up to defend one of the other girls, or for speaking out of place. The more she stood up for herself and others, the worse the beatings got. But that had never stopped her. More times that she could count Jane had been locked in a cupboard for days, no food and no water, only to keep fighting back the abuse the moment she was let out. For there was one thing Jane had always known instinctively and went against what the horrible Mr. Merton had wanted the girls to believe: no one had the right to own her, no one had the right to put her in a cage.

 

_Does this make me a bad person? My hunger for freedom?_ she had often wondered. Was she supposed to “know her place”, like she had been told many times? Was she supposed to let others walk all over her because they were bigger and stronger, and she was just a starved child? If she was supposed to, she had never cared. She had never wanted to, and she wasn’t the type to do things if she didn’t feel like it. Everything she had done, she had done for _her_. To survive. She had never stolen for Mr. Merton’s benefit. She had stolen so she could have something to eat from time to time while she measured her options and came up with a plan to escape. Did that make her a criminal? Possibly. A casualty of a flawed system? Yes, that she was. But she’d never let it define her. She was a person first and foremost. She was a human being. She wouldn’t put up with being treated like a lesser thing.

 

The other girls had never understood this, or her. They had always kept their heads down and allowed to be treated like dirt on the sole of a shoe. They did think they deserved that, and that their lives would never get any better because they hadn’t got the right to pretend more than what they were born with, which was nothing. Some thought Jane was a troublemaker and that one day she’d end up getting a beating so brutal she wouldn’t get up the floor afterwards, whereas others believed she wasn’t right in the head just like her mother and that it was the reason behind her behaviour. Either way, they all agreed on one thing: Jane was wrong in standing up for herself, and her street-smarts wouldn’t be enough to save her from the fate all girls like her shared.

 

But then she had found someone that understood. Or rather she’d been found by someone that understood. The Honourable Phryne Fisher, a wealthy socialité that had been on the receiving end of angry fists herself, had helped Jane in her time of need, and then she had offered to put a roof above her head and given her a home and an education. Miss Phryne had taken her off the streets, she had given her clean clothes to wear and a room with nice things that she could call her own, and food, and books, and the most wonderful feelings: that she counted, that she was someone, that she had self worth, that she was _understood_.

 

Miss Phryne’s childhood had been also marked by poverty, tragedy and violence, just like Jane’s. She didn’t know _all_ the details, but she was smart enough to listen in to conversations between her and others now and then, and the rest had been easy to figure out. Miss Phryne’s upbringing had been less than ideal, with a drunken father that also locked her up in cupboards when she misbehaved, and her younger sister going missing, her fate unknown until only recently. She had survived all that, and then a war had disrupted the world as they all knew it, and she had also survived it. Miss Phryne was, like Jane, _a survivor_ , and she didn't let anyone convince her otherwise. She had seen and experienced the same horrors Jane had, give or take, but she'd risen above all of that to become this empowered, brilliant woman that fended for herself and didn't take a thing lying down. And she was a good person, too. Miss Phryne had a big heart, and when she loved someone, when she cared for someone, she did so deeply and with fierce loyalty.

 

And Miss Phryne was, like Jane, determined to be free.

 

In the older woman Jane had found a role model, someone to look up to. When her mother had shown up at Wardlow she had been so very scared to lose the home and family she had there, Dot and Mr. Butler and Bert and Cec, and even Aunt Prudence that had had trouble accepting her at first. She had been scared to lose Miss Phryne and the loving, caring relationship they had.

 

She cared for her birth mother, she loved her, but she wasn't under the delusion that things would get better for the woman by some miracle. Miracles didn't exist. They weren't a real thing, they were just stories people told themselves and others to lessen life's adversities.

 

Jane knew better. She was young, but she had seen and lived through enough hardship to understand that love, good intentions and hope didn't have magical healing properties. She loved her mother and her mother loved her, but the truth was that the woman was unwell and unfit to care for a child. It pained Jane, it broke her heart, but she knew she couldn't go live with her mother again. She had wounded up in the streets once, how long would it take before she found herself begging and stealing and being beaten with a belt by some evil man like Mr. Merton again?

 

All of her life Jane had only had her mother, whom she had cared for as much as a child can care for a person with a mental illness, no one else to help her when things got bad. When she had been by herself it had almost been _easier,_ no matter how much she missed her mother: she had been able to fight for herself better without the constant weight of her mother’s health and wellbeing on her shoulders. (She had often wondered if thinking that made her a horrible person, selfish person too.)

 

And then she had Miss Phryne.

 

Miss Phryne, with her warm eyes and kind smile and her even warmer, kinder heart. Miss Phryne, that listened to her and encouraged her to be herself. Miss Phryne, that insisted she could be whatever she wanted to be so as long as she worked hard enough and with passion. Miss Phryne, who loved the hardest and the deepest expecting absolutely nothing in return.

 

Jane couldn’t be more grateful for all the opportunities life with Miss Phryne had presented her with: a home, and an education, and a loving family. She missed them all dearly now that she was in boarding school. Sometimes when she and other girls talked about their homes and their loved one, or when she was alone in her room at night after long days filled with wonderful lectures and activities and she wrote letters to them before setting in bed with her current favorite book, she indulged herself a little. She imagined the letter for Dot was for her older sister, and that the one for Cec and Bert was for her uncles, and that the one for Mr. Butler was for her grandfather. She wrote to her Aunt Prudence, too, and of course she wrote to Miss Phryne. Jane would never tell anyone about it, especially not to Miss Phryne, but everything she wished she could share with her mother, everything she wished she could tell her and ask her, all of those things she poured into her letters to Miss Phryne.

 

Now that they were both in the same continent, correspondence between them was delivered quicker. Miss Phryne had mentioned to Jane in her letters that Detective Inspector Jack Robinson was visiting her in London, and Jane had very much been able to read between the lines: the detective didn’t happen to be visiting Europe at the same time Miss Phryne was, no. The detective had gone to Europe _to visit her_ , and Jane would go as far as believing that Miss Phryne must have invited him, because otherwise the man would have never proposed or decided such a venture by himself. Miss Phryne must have suggested it first.

 

She had seen them together- Jack visited Wardlow often- and she knew that they were fond of each other. The inspector looked at Phryne like she was the sun, and the moon, and the stars, and she cared for him in a way that Jane didn’t believe she’d ever cared for anyone else in her life. She knew better than to ask, but that didn’t mean she didn’t observe. She had seen the look of fright in the detective’s face when Miss Phryne’s life had been in danger the time Foyle had abducted her, she’d seen the way he’d looked at her the following night from across the parlour at her birthday party.

 

Miss Phryne was an intelligent, independent woman and she didn’t need a man to complete her or make her happy, for she had taught Jane that one was responsible for their own life and their own happiness. But one couldn’t disagree that the presence of the inspector in her life made Miss Phryne much happier. And Jane would have betted her whole collection of hardback Jane Austen books on one thing: the detective was definitely a happier man because of Miss Phryne’s presence in his life. All of their lives were better because they had Miss Phryne, but the impact she had on the inspector was something different, something deeper and more meaningful. Jane didn’t have much first-hand experience on the subject, but she had read about it a lot and she was an observant young lady. By the time she had left Australia for boarding school she had been _almost_ sure that her guardian and the inspector were in love.

 

When she mentioned in a letter that the man in question would be visiting London (would be visiting _her_ ), Jane had been positive that they’d finally admitted to there being feelings between them that ran deeper than friendship, _at last_. But when Miss Phryne wrote to her asking if she’d like to spend her Easter break in London with them or have them visit her in France, she had been positive that whatever existed between them was very important to Miss Phryne and that she wanted to share it with her, with Jane, too.

 

Jane had written back to her immediately letting her know that she would love to meet with them in London. Miss Phryne had told Jane a lot of things about London, and she was excited to go to the bookshops and clothing shops there. Miss Phryne had mentioned in another letter that she wanted to make sure both Jane’s bookshelves and wardrobe were never lacking, and that she wanted her to choose the reading material and clothing herself. She had also mentioned the detective briefly, one or two lines here and there, and how Jane could ask him about book recommendations before they visited the bookshops since he was so well read. And how much he’d love to help her start her own coin collection if she were inclined to do so.

 

Miss Phryne was trying to let her know the detective would be an important and stable part of her life from now on, and that she wished to share with her the happiness she’d found with this man and make her part of it, too. Jane knew Miss Phryne was not trying to replace her birth mother (she’d never try such a thing) and neither did she want the detective to fill in the place her birth father had left vacant. Miss Phryne just wanted to spend time with her because she missed her, like Jane missed her, and since the inspector was there visiting why not have him be a part of the fun as well? Jane read this invitation to spend time in London with them both as Miss Phryne’s way of telling her Jack was family now, like Aunt Prudence and everyone at Wardlow, that she could trust him and that she could count on him. It was Miss Phryne’s way to let her now she had someone else to look after her, another role model to look up to and learn from.

 

And Jane couldn’t be happier. She was happy for Miss Phryne, and for the inspector, and she was happy for herself. For there was another thing the young Miss Jane Ross knew very well, and that was that not everyone had the chance to count on so many people that loved them and cared for them. She had been one of those neglected, uncared for children. Miss Phryne herself had been one as well. As Miss Phryne, Jane didn’t take what she had for granted, for she knew what it was like to have nothing at all and no one to turn to.

 

So she went to London filled with happiness and gratitude, ready to put into practice what Miss Phryne had taught her and embrace whatever adventures would come her way in the days she’d spend in England with her guardian and the man that seemed to have stolen the lady detective’s heart. (Although Jane was sure _no one_ could steal from Miss Phryne. If the detective had her heart, it was because she had willingly given it to him.) She arrived at King’s Cross on a sunny morning, where both detectives were waiting for her at the platform.

 

“My dear Jane, it’s so good to see you!” Miss Phryne said, hugging the young girl close and kissing her on both cheeks. Inspector Robinson stayed by Miss Phryne’s side, looking as if he were feeling a little bit nervous and out of place watching their affectionate greeting.

 

“It’s so good to see you too, Miss Phryne!” Jane said, and then she turned to Jack. “And it’s good to see you too, Inspector.”

 

“Likewise, Miss Jane” he said with a smile on his face that matched the one on Jane’s and Miss Phryne’s.

 

“How was the journey? Are you tired?” Miss Phryne asked her as they made their way to the station's exit.

 

“The journey was fine. I'm not tired. I'm happy to finally see you, Miss Phryne!”

 

The weather was ideal, the impending spring making itself present in the cool but nice breeze and the warm sun that felt like a caress on the skin. They dropped Jane’s luggage at the Ritz, and then they left to explore London together. Miss Phryne had a basket with cheeses, sandwiches, finger food and biscuits that were as good as Dot’s, and they enjoyed the rest of the morning laying on a blanket under an oak tree in Hyde Park. The welcome picnic, Miss Phryne told her, had been her idea, but the visit to the British Museum afterwards had been the inspector’s because he remembered Jane liked history.

 

“Thank you so much for suggesting this, Inspector,” the young girl told him when they were standing in front of the Rosetta Stone, Jane’s eyes open wide with wonder. “I love history, and I love museums. I think,” Jane said, voicing for the first time an idea she had been considering more and more since she had started boarding school, but that she was yet to share with anyone  “I think that I would like to be an archeologist.” Then she looked at her guardian, an expression on her face that could have only been described as a nervous one, and she asked: “Do you think it’s a good idea, Miss Phyne?”

 

Jane hadn’t mentioned her interest in ancient history and archeology to Miss Phryne up until then because she was scared the subject could trigger some bad memories for the older woman. She knew about her sister and what that monster had done to her, and why. Perhaps Jane had been avoiding telling her Miss Phryne about her wish to become a historian or an archeologist because she didn’t want to remind her of the man that had killed little Janey and of everything that had happened the time he had abducted her so he could try and kill Miss Phryne. But standing right there in front of the stone, surrounded by all the beautiful works housed in the museum, Jane couldn’t help herself and the words came out of her mouth because she could stop them. It was something Jane was really passionate about, ancient history and the story of the past of humanity by recovering and examining its remains. She loved to read about those things, and the more she did the more she realized she wanted to be the one writing books about her expeditions and her findings.

 

“I think it’s a marvelous idea, Jane,” Miss Phryne said with a smile on her face. Jane did know how to read the woman’s face, and she could see there in the beautiful eyes of the lady that had been so kind to her that she understood how Jane felt about telling her this for the first time. She knew what a great deal it had meant to her, and how afraid she had been she’d made a mistake by doing so. “Whatever you choose to be in life, Jane, I will always support you and encourage you. And I am sure that if you keep up the hard, good work you’ll excel in whichever workfield you decide to be a part of, and I’ll be very proud of you. Or more so than I already am,” Miss Phryne added, and Jane smiled from ear to ear.

 

No one had told her that before, that they were proud of her and that they’d always encourage her to follow her dreams and reach her goals no matter what. It was so reassuring, such a beautiful sensation, to have a strong, open minded woman like Miss Phryne stand by her side. She made Jane feel she was someone worth believing in, someone that had a place in this world. Someone important. Someone that counted. Miss Phryne’s love and passion for life and everything it had to offer were contagious, and having worked hard herself to make her way in a world that proved to be so difficult and unfair for women she knew exactly what a young girl like Jane needed to learn so she could fend for herself and make her own way. She couldn’t be more grateful for the older woman’s guidance.

 

“Thank you, Miss Phryne.”

 

“I have several archeology books back at home that you could find interesting, Miss Jane,” the inspector told her. “Once we have returned to Australia I could send them to your school in France.”

 

“That would be a wonderful thing, Jack!” Miss Phryne said, and Jane pretended to be examining a collection of hieroglyphic texts that was displayed next to the Rosetta Stone so the couple couldn’t notice her grinning, for it didn’t escape her eye that Miss Phryne’s fingers were laced with the inspector’s.

 

They spent the rest of the afternoon visiting the museum, talking about the things Jane had read about in books, and that she now was seeing in the flesh. Everything was so mesmerizing, so wonderfully inspiring and intellectually stimulating. She was always a couple of steps ahead of them, leading the way, and the detectives followed her. Whether they realized they were still walking hand in hand, Jane didn’t know, but it made her happy to see Miss Phryne and the inspector finally at ease with their feelings for each other.

 

“Thank you for suggesting we visit the museum, Jack,” Jane heard Miss Phryne say to the inspector as they were leaving, Jane’s nose buried in the little booklet where she had been taking notes about everything she had found fascinating and wanted to research more on. She pretended to be lost in thought rereading the notes she’d made on the colossal red granite statue of Amenhotep III so she could listen in the two adults’ conversation.

 

“Thank you for letting me be a part of Jane’s first day in London, Miss Fisher.”

 

“So I was thinking we could have a day out tomorrow, Jane, so you can pick your new wardrobe,” Miss Phryne said to the girl. “We can try on as many outfits, hats and shoes as we want, and then we can have lunch at Selfridges. Oh you’ll love Selfridges!” Miss Phryne said enthusiastically. “The inspector can join us afterwards and the three of us will go to the best bookshops around here. Perhaps find something on archeology for you. What do you think?”

 

Jane thought that all of those things- the beautiful town of London, and visiting the British Museum, and new clothes and books, and Miss Phryne and the inspector, the sense of having a family, the feeling of being important to people, of being _loved_ \- all of that was so much more than she could have ever imagined or dared to hope for. It looked out of the pages of the fairytale stories she had never been read as a child. But this was real, and it was _hers_. This wonderful life, these opportunities, they were hers. Miss Phryne and the inspector were _hers,_ her chosen family.

 

She couldn't be more grateful for them, for this all.

 

Her eyes were shining brighter than the sun when she turned to Miss Phryne and the inspector and said:

 

“I think I would like that very much.”

 

Both adults smiled to her, and the three of them kept on walking as the sun set in London. And in that moment the young Jane Ross knew something with the utmost certainty: she wasn't alone anymore, and she would never be again.


	28. Chapter 28

**BEATRICE.** I love you with so much of my heart that none is left to protest.

 

_ Much Ado About Nothing (4.1.283) _

  
  
  


As he kissed up and down her dorsal spine, he couldn’t help but remember how his lips had longed for hers, and every inch of hers, that morning he’d made the decision to leave Melbourne and go after her, wherever it took him. Whatever it took from him. It had been months since he’d arrived in London, and even more time had passed since he’d left Australia behind in the search of the only feeling of home and belonging he’d ever known. After over a hundred nights spent in her arms, his still hungered for her embrace, for she did make him hungrier the more she satisfied him. The taste of her tongue still filled his mouth, and it would do so forever, but after many thousand kisses shared between them it was now the most familiar flavour he’d ever tasted. It also was the most intoxicating.

 

“You will be the death of me,” he whispered against her warm, glowing skin, his mouth wet and hot. He soothed her flesh with a lick of his tongue after every nibble and bite. 

 

He had known it even before that morning in the airfield. He’d been sure he’d die delirious with abstinence or choked on the poetry he’d never read to her, but he’d been wrong, at least partially. Yes, he’d go deliriously mad with abstinence if he ever went without the taste and feel of her under his hands and inside his mouth (and oh, he didn’t dare think of that, not when he had her all to himself, laying flat on her stomach naked and flushed and moaning because of what his long fingers were doing between her slightly spread legs). But he wouldn’t die choked on unsaid words, for he had been given the chance to tell her how she made him feel, write letters to her that she’d read by herself or have him read them to her, quote from the works of authors that had been as passionate about the women they loved as he was about her. 

 

And that made it all more intimate. More special. Deadlier. Detective Inspector Jack Robinson was now more certain than ever that like Antony in the arms of Cleopatra he would meet his downfall wishing he had time to place one last kiss on the lips of the Honourable Phryne Fisher.

 

“How it both hurts and soothes, your mouth, my love.” Her voice was raspy and caught in her throat, her breathing heavy. He flipped her over so she laid on her back and started tending to her breasts, her collarbone, her long, elegant neck. He remembered thinking the same about her mouth after their farewell kiss, that it was a source of both ache and comfort. 

 

He slipped inside of her and filled her up to the hilt. It felt like coming home. It always felt like coming home, being buried inside her, his fingers curled around her wrists holding her down to the mattress while he fucked her, Phryne's teeth leaving marks on his bare chest, shoulders and throat, and her gasps encouraging him on until he made her come.

 

She was home. Exquisite and bohemian and exotic and so different from everything he'd always thought he wanted before he met her, before he found her kneeling on a bathroom floor turned into a crime scene the morning Mrs. Andrews decided to become a widow. 

 

That was Phryne Fisher to him.

 

“When do you like it most?” he asked her in between thrust “When it hurts or when it soothes?”

 

“I like it always, love it always” she replied breathlessly, a hand slipping in between them to touch herself where their bodies were joined. “And you, Inspector?” she asked, biting on his neck and then running circles with her tongue on the reddened skin. “When do you like me most? When I hurt or when I sooth?” 

 

“When you fuck me,” he half moaned, half gruntled. “I like you most when you fuck me, Phryne.”

 

He collapsed on top of her after he came inside her. She wrapped her long legs tighter around his torso, her ankles pressed against his back, and dug her nails in the flesh of his shoulders to keep him close. She always did that after sex; she preferred to bask in the afterglow of their lovemaking with him softening inside her. 

 

“I love you,” he breathed in Phryne's ear, his teeth teasing her neck gently. “I love you. So, so, so.”

 

Before he had asked for a leave of absence, before he'd visited Mrs. Prudence Stanley to ask her for the Fisher Family address in London, he had spent a whole night tossing and turning in his bed because he was scared of things he couldn't have possibly been able to explain to himself, not to mention to others. The madness she made him feel terrified him. It was the same madness that had convinced him to take his romantic overtures further, pushing past unknown boundaries. That madness was the reason he found himself there that night, where he'd found himself every night during the past couple of months and where he felt a sense of belonging so strong it made him drunk and dizzy: with his naked body nested against hers, their heartbeat almost synchronized, her caresses and kisses grazing his overheated skin and her damp sex rubbing on his tight, on his hip, asking for more. 

 

He had thought he'd known the full extent of that madness before he left Australia, but the truth was that he didn't. Oh, he'd had no idea what true madness was like, not until he arrived in London one fine autumn day. Not until he saw her standing there in King's Cross, the scarf he'd given her around her delicate neck, her eyes shining with pleasure and affection and something else he'd not dared to name back then at the sight of him, with his worst for the wear old suitcase and practically dead on his feet after such an extenuous journey. 

 

He knew madness now, what it was like. What it felt like. The woman now writhing above him as she rode him was the definition of madness. Other men had mused about this ever since the beginning of human civilization. Adoration so profound it bends you over at its mercy. He would have never experienced the love he had read about in literary classics had it not been for her. No play by Shakespeare, no work of poetry had prepared him for what it was like to have the madness happen to him. He'd written about it himself in the letters he had penned down for her in the weeks it had taken him to reunite with Miss Fisher in England. And, whereas Jack didn't consider himself a gifted poet he doubted anyone else would have been able to express it any better or more accurately, for his feelings for Phryne were his own, and he and only he understood them completely. (And sometimes he even had doubts he fully understood them.)

 

“I love how you look at me like that,” she says into his open mouth, between hungry kisses in the throes of passion. 

 

“Like what?”

 

“Like you worship me.”

 

“I worship you like the Egyptian goddess you remind me of.”

 

Madness. Making love to that woman was madness. Each and every time. He'd been fucking her basically every day for the past five, six months, and every single time it was a new kind of terrifying, intoxicating madness. And he could never get enough of it. He always wanted more. And so did she. Unbelievable as it may have seemed to him a year and a half ago, he made her hungrier the most he satisfied her. She always wanted more from him, she never tired, she was as deep in the madness as Jack himself was. 

 

Those were their last nights in London and by unspoken agreement they were making the most of them. Before they returned to Australia. Before they went home together. Before another chapter in their lives and their partnership started. London would forever have a new meaning for them, a shared one. As would Madrid. As would Paris. London was the city where they had surrendered themselves to their feelings. To Jack Robinson and Phryne Fisher, London would forever be the city where they'd consummated their madness. 

 

“Fuck me with your words,” she asked, her tired, spent body nestling the side of his. 

 

He knew what she meant. He knew what she wanted. He traced the contour of her ribs and the side of her breasts with his fingertips as words written by Shakespeare left his mouth. 

 

“ _ I love you with so much of my heart that none is left to protest… _ ”


	29. Chapter 29

**PORTIA.** One half of me is yours, the other half yours. Mine own, I would say. But if mine, then yours, and so all yours.

 

_ The Merchant of Venice (3.2.16-18) _

  
  
  


 

They visited the Palace Pier in Brighton before they left England. They wanted to stay in East Sussex for a couple of days before they started their journey back to the Antipodes. But spring was slowly beginning to blossom, and a last romantic adventure in the beautiful county of Devon sounded like a delicious treat before they returned to Australia, where autumn would be in its full splendor when the ship arrived at the port. A friend of Phryne’s had a lovely summer house in Devon that she’d offered to lend them. The wealthy family it belonged to usually spent the winter months in Cannes or Nice, so the house was always vacant from late September until the first weeks of June.

 

The view was simply spectacular from the house’s main balcony on the third floor. The sea could be contemplated in all its breathtaking beauty, its color so intensely blue it got confused with the sky. It was glorious.

 

And yet, if there was something the Honourable Phryne Fisher couldn’t take her eyes off of, it wasn’t precisely the serene landscape. 

 

“Penny for your thoughts,” she said to Inspector Jack Robinson.

 

They were sitting on a blanket by the seashore, his back pressed to her chest and her arms wrapped around his torso from behind. She was resting her chin on his shoulder, and he was sitting between the V of her long legs, completely relaxed. They had been there for a while, watching the sunset and listening to the waves breaking on the shore, lost in thought and in silence but together. Always together.

 

“I was just pondering on the beauty of it all,” he said, simply, his voice barely a whisper. Even out in the open the intimacy they shared was the same they had grown accustomed to in the privacy of their bedroom. It went beyond sex and physical pleasure. It had more to do when the emotional connection they had forged in the time they’d known each other than with any other thing. They were compatible sexually, of that they were very aware of, but they also fitted together in ways deeper, much more meaningful than the joining of two bodies in the sanctity of the boudoir. And that was something they both knew, for their relationship had been more special and relevant than any other long before he called her bed his own.

 

_ Their bed. Their bedroom. _ It was new, thinking in terms of shared ownership. The beds they’d slept on in England weren’t technically  _ hers _ \- they’d been staying at the Ritz. But the bed waiting for her in Melbourne, in her boudoir in the St. Kilda home… In those last few days she found herself thinking that she’d like for him to sleep with her at Wardlow more often than not. She wondered whether he’d have any objections to frequently spending the night at her home once they returned back home.

But she didn’t want to ponder that at the time. She lived in the moment, she didn’t constantly worry about the future. She’d never let anxiety gotten the best of her, and she would not start now. She wanted to enjoy the last of their trip together, the moments of peace and quiet that she would have never thought she’d appreciate so much, but she did. Because she was there with him. It was odd, and terrifying, and beautiful, and she’d never had this with any other lover. 

 

She could only have this with him.

 

She only wanted this with him.

 

And she wasn’t as surprised as she should have been that she thought it was wonderful.

 

Phryne wouldn’t waste a single second of that afternoon analyzing what the future held for them, for the future wasn’t there yet, and she’d not hand over the precious time she had with her inspector to something abstract and unpredictable that wasn’t even  _ present _ (and at this thought she laughed, for she had not intended the pun, but well, it was there.)

 

She closed her eyes, took a deep breath and kissed him on the cheek. 

 

“I was pondering the beauty of it all, too,” she confessed, without revealing to him that she was actually referring to something else entirely.

 

_ He knows _ , she said to herself.  _ He knows I love him. He knows this is different, knows he is different. This is special. This is probably forever. _

 

To have and to hold someone forever suddenly wasn’t as scary as she would have once considered it. Sleep with them every night, share the same bed, make love over and over again until they were both boneless and breathless and utterly, completely spent. They had had all that in their time in London, and she had adored every second of it. She missed Australia and her chosen family, and solving crimes, and driving the Hispano-Suiza at a speed Jack would definitely frown upon. But, even before they had even left Europe she was already feeling nostalgic for everything they had called theirs while they lived their romantic adventure.

 

_ Stop it _ , she scolded herself when she felt a pang of nostalgia in the pit of her stomach.  _ You live in the moment. You are not one for nostalgic contemplation, Phryne Fisher. Nostalgia and you have absolutely nothing to do, never have. _

 

But what if they did now?

 

She had told him he made her want him in ways she had never thought possible before, and it was true. He was the exception to her every rule. That same night she had also told him that she believed they were permanently rediscovering themselves- learning new things, relearning others, remembering things long forgotten. He wasn’t the same man he’d been the day she had picked him up at the train station, and neither was she the same woman that had wrapped his scarf around her neck that morning before stepping out on the street to hail a cab to King’s Cross. They had left Australia one way, and they’d be returning changed by their time together and their love.

 

It excited her and terrified her in equals parts, just as waiting for him to reunite with her in Europe had.

 

She wouldn’t want it any other way, she knew. She was a firm believer that the fun thing about life laid in not knowing what could possibly happen next. What else will they discover together- about themselves, about one another- as their relationship progressed back at home? What new things would they learn? She was sure she didn’t know half the things she would know in six months time. She now definitely knew so much more than she had known the morning she’d taken off on her airplane.

 

_ Yes, terrifying and exciting in equal parts. _

 

And yet, she found it beautiful, all of it. Absolutely all of it. Even the nostalgia she felt for a place she had not left, a place that was nowhere and everywhere at the same time, for it was every corner of London and every bookshop they’d visited, and every restaurant they’d dined at, and every inch of the mattresses they’d made love on. 

 

Phryne chuckled at herself- a sound so soft it was barely audible, and the inspector’s ear didn’t quite catch it, concentrated as he was on the ministrations of his lover’s lips on his neck. She understood that she didn’t have any reason to feel nostalgic for anything they’d lived in London, for they were taking it back to Australia with them. And they’d easily find it there, too, in the cases they’d solve, and the meals prepared by Mr. Butler they’d share at City South, and the bed in her boudoir, and every new place their future adventures would take them.

 

Every new place their love would take them.

 

And to think, it had all unraveled thanks to his last attempt at a romantic overture. That morning in the airfield the words had surprised her as they left her lips, but she had meant them. She had wanted him to go after her. She had wanted him more than anything in the world. She still did.

 

She suspected that she always would.

 

_ The exception to the rule, indeed. _

 

The longing she had felt back then, the desire to be with him in more ways than the obvious, she remembered, had scared her and amazed her in equal parts. 

 

But instead of running away and hiding herself away in the arms of other men, she had surprised both him and herself by saying the words that would change the course of their relationship.

 

_ Come after me, Jack Robinson. _

 

The words hadn't come a minute too late or too soon. The realization that she wanted him to just do that (go after her) had come at the exact time. 

 

She had asked. He had followed. 

 

“I am so glad you came after me, Jack,” she whispered in his ear. “So thankful that you came after me.”

 

She adored him, and felt so adored by him in return. She maintained what she'd thought that night she'd laid awake in Darwin pondering this: he loved her for who she was and he didn't want to change her, he accepted her flaws and all and he wasn't set to better her in any way. That was also something that she was positive would always remain the same.

 

Phryne now knew what it was like to fall asleep in his arms and wake up nestled against his chest. She'd enjoy sunny afternoons in Hyde Park with him sitting under a tree, her head on his lap while he read to her out of whatever classic he'd chosen that day. She'd had breakfast in bed with him (at morning and at odd hours, too). He'd read poetry to her, and erotic passages from forbidden novels, and even letters he himself had penned during his journey. She loved him, and he loved her too, and they knew it.

 

When she first had admitted to herself that she felt for him things she'd never experienced before, she had resented Jack a little for taking him down with him when he'd fallen for her. Now she wasn't entirely sure who had taken down who exactly, for sometimes she thought that perhaps she had fallen in love first and taken him down with her.(Not that it mattered. They had fallen, both of them, and willingly. There was nothing else to be added to that.)

 

“Thank you for asking, Miss Fisher,“ he replied “I'm glad I came after you. I'm glad you wanted me to.”

 

She laid back on the blanket, face up to the sky that was a furious tint of orange now, her head placed on his lap. He buried his fingers in her bob the color of raven feathers and massaged her scalp slowly. Phryne closed her eyes and hummed contently to let him know she was enjoying the pressure of his fingertips there. 

 

He leaned down to press a kiss to her forehead. Her eyes closed on their own accord and she sighed her content. 

 

Detective Inspector Jack Robinson was in love with her and she was in love with him. It beat all odds. It was the exception to every rule. It was the definition of madness.

  
It made her happy. 


	30. Chapter 30

**POLONIUS.** Though this be madness, yet there is method in ’t.

 

_Hamlet (2.2.195)_

 

The end of the journey was near, and the experiences they’d shared in that city- and every place they’d visited- would be forever etched in what made them who they were: their hearts and souls, their flesh and skin. It was unchangeable, and they were changed. What had started with a dare ( _Come after me, Jack Robinson-_ those words would echo inside his head, within his _everything_ , until he breathed his last) had blossomed into a romantic relationship that was both the most fulfilling and deepest any of them had ever had. It emerged not from the ashes but in spite of them, the remains of the previous emotional involvements each had been part of- a marriage unable to survive the scars earned in the trenches; a succession of passionate encounters turned violent when one half of the whole thought he had the right to own the other. Their love story so exquisite, so unique, it didn’t surprise them that it had the property to heal old wounds.

 

They asked each other what they wanted to do on their last full day in London.  A proper farewell to the corner of the world that had seen them become so much more than she’d ever thought she’d want to be with someone, so much more than he’d ever dared dreaming of being with someone. Stronger together than they’d ever been apart, ready to embark on the trip home.

 

But the little funny thing was, neither of them had felt far from home even though the Antipodes were over ten thousand miles away. They had had a home in each other, and they always would. He’d known he’d come home the moment he’d seen her on the platform at King’s Cross, and she’d felt like she was finally home the moment he stepped out of the train even if she had arrived in England several weeks before.

 

A river boat trip down the River Thames, he suggested. A last visit to the Tower Bridge was in order, then, according to her. And oh, how their choices mirrored their souls and essence, they couldn’t help but notice: the river was a lovely metaphor for his contemplative nature, while what was probably one of the tallest points in London at the time- the whole city in all its beauty right there for them to admire and bask in- spoke of her views on life louder and clearer than any words ever could.

 

“How many lovers have had the Thames be a witness of their first _something_ , their last _something_ , or simply one out of several _things_ that made their relationship more meaningful? And how many more lovers will? For we certainly aren’t the first, and we will not be the last.”

 

“What a beautiful, gifted poet you are, Jack” she said lovingly. And then she asked him: “Will you miss London, Jack?”

 

“I’d only miss it if I was leaving you in it. I only miss the places where you are and I am not. I only miss _you_. Now, Miss Fisher, will you miss London?”

 

“The city has its charm, but then so does Melbourne. Every city in the world has its charm. But cities, or most cities anyway, stay exactly where they are, and you come back to them and visit them. Walk down their streets. Stare in awe at the art in the galleries and the museums. Breathe it in, let it wash over you. London will be here for me, for us, if we ever wish to do this all, and more, again. London will be here long after we’re both gone,” she smiled at him, and a shadow of nostalgia flashed in her eyes for the briefest of seconds.

 

She had said something similar to him when they’d been in Spain, about how she’d often thought as a child that Madrid would always be there waiting for Janey, but that Janey would never arrive, only to realize when she grew older that the city would be there forever and that a lot of people would never arrive; it hadn’t made it hurt less, but it was something she remembered thinking about every time she visited a new city somewhere in the world.

 

“I would only miss London if you were staying here, Jack.”

 

It was a big step for her, admitting to the notion that she would miss a place if a man were staying behind. She had never stopped anyone from doing what they wished, and she’d never let anyone stop her from moving forward. But it was true that, hypothetically, if she decided to stay there and he chose to go back to Melbourne, or if the tables were turned and he wished to remain there and she went back to Melbourne, she would miss him. She wouldn’t let anything get between their choices, she would do what she wanted, she’d not beg him to do something different from what he wanted, but she would miss him.

 

“Good thing neither of us is staying in London, then, Miss Fisher.”

 

“The world’s too wide and too vast to only stay in one place, Inspector. Just as I said before: every city has its charm, and they’re all rooted to the spot and won’t be going anywhere. It’s the people in them what makes the difference. Australia is not the same when it doesn’t have you in it. London will be not the same once you’ve left tomorrow, for it will be missing you.”

 

He cupped her cheek in his hand. Phryne closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath, enjoying the gentle sensation of his fingertips on her skin, one that she’d never tire of.

 

“Beauty, art, music, poetry, architecture- that’s everywhere, in unique and particular ways.” She went on. “And the more you can have of them, the better. There’ll be beauty in Melbourne when we get back, and art, and music, and poetry, and architecture. I’ll enjoy all of that, like I always do. I’ll enjoy thousands of other things, maybe things I have yet to discover that I enjoy. But there are people in Australia that cannot be in two places at the same time.” She was referring to Mac, and Dot, and her aunt, and the rest of her mismatched family, of course. “I miss Australia because I miss those people. So in a world that’s too wide and too vast to only stay in one place, I think that the people we love are what roots us to the same spot for long periods of time. It’s because of them that I am not a wanderer like I wished to be when I was a little girl pretending to be a pirate, an old, filthy bathtub my ship that sailed the seven seas.”

 

“You are what roots me to the same spot,” he said.

 

And then she understood, she saw under a different light more of the depths of her feelings for him. She could do whatever she wanted, would always do whatever she wanted. She could wish to be here one day and there the next, and no one could ever stop her. She set her own limits, and most of the time she believed there were none. No one owned her, she was truly and completely herself. She made her own choices.

 

They weren’t tied to each other, they were free. He could end things one day. She could end things one day. No one was the other’s property, they had their own voices and they’d always hear each other. They were two adults fully choosing to be together in this whole madness.

 

And if given the choice, she would always choose him, the same way he’d always choose her.

 

“It felt like home the whole time here with you,” he said. She already knew that. It was true for her as well, and they’d talked about it before. “You made London feel like home. And Madrid. And Paris. And every single place we’ve been together. And Melbourne, you made Melbourne feel like home, long before that morning in the airfield when you dared me to come meet you here. One day almost two years ago I walked into a crime scene and I saw a lady kneeling by a dead man, and even though I didn’t understand it back then, now I know that in that moment after over thirty years of wandering, I was home.”

 

The rest of their boat trip down the Thames was spent in silence, Phryne’s head resting on his shoulder and Jack’s arm wrapped around her middle, holding her close to him. They breathed each other in like they had that day in the car when they went from King’s Cross to the Ritz. They breathed each other in like they did every time when they basked in the aftermath of their lovemaking. They breathed each other in like they didn’t know what oxygen was for- they only needed the presence of the other there to keep on going, to survive.

 

They were off to climb up to the Tower Bridge afterwards. They looked down on the city. They talked some more, kissed some more. Small, innocent public displays of affection had become something common between them, something they felt comfortable with. She didn’t want to wonder if it’d be the same in Australia, where he was a divorced police officer and she was a well-known socialité that enjoyed parties that lasted until way after the sun was up. She’d think about it some other time, if the time to think about it ever came. At the moment, they were still there and Australia was still over ten thousand miles away. She wouldn’t worry for whatever awaited them ten thousand miles away, for it wasn’t in her nature.

 

Oh, this whole thing called love really was the definition of madness.

 

“Where would you wish to go next, Miss Fisher?”

 

Phryne looked at her wrist watch. She had something special planned for their last night in London, a surprise for Jack. They still had time to visit one more place she wanted to take a last look at before they had to go.

 

“Let’s take a stroll around Hyde Park.”

 

They walked hand in hand for a while, Phryne leading the way. He suspected where she was taking them, but he didn’t say a thing. His theory- oh, always thinking in detective terms, was he not!- was confirmed when she stopped at the same spot he would have stopped had he been the one leading, and not the one doing the following.

 

“This is where we said it,” she simply stated.

 

“You didn’t let me say it,” he reminded her playfully. “If I recall correctly, you interrupted me before I could finish the sentence.”

 

“What was I supposed to do, Jack? You were taking forever!”

 

“Admit that you wanted it to say it first, Miss Fisher,” his tone was still playful. “Admit that, for once, you didn’t want to have the last word. You wanted to have the _first_.” He laughed, the realization of it all causing a warm feeling to tingle every single nerve ending in his body. “You wanted to say it first.”

 

“What if I did, Inspector?” she asked him, an eyebrow raised and a sly smile on her face. “What if I wanted to say it first? What if that is why I interrupted you?” She didn’t let him answer the question. “What if I wanted to come here today because I wish to let you finish that sentence?”

 

He looked at her in the eyes, those beautiful eyes that were exotic and haunting and held so much sentiment. So much sweetness. So much fire. He cupped her face in his hands, she wrapped her arms around his broad shoulders.

 

He wouldn’t say the words that had almost left his mouth that day, when they’d been enjoying a walk in Hyde Park and he had been going on about the things he liked the most about her. Thirty things, one for every glorious year she had been in this world. He wouldn’t say them, for that they had come up with a version of their own that now had so much more meaning, it was so much more special. They had reduced the three most important words of the English language to only two, and they were theirs, and they had been saying them to each other all the time, all over again.

 

Detective Inspector Jack Robinson placed a soft kiss on the Honourable Phryne Fisher’s forehead, and then looking right into her haunting, enchanted eyes he said:

 

“Me too.”

 

“Me too,” she said back to him. “There’s somewhere else I want us to go before the day is through, but I can’t tell you where exactly because I want it to be a surprise. Do you trust me, Inspector?”

 

“Implicitly, Miss Fisher.”

 

“Well, no one can be perfect,” she teased, and they laughed, and they kissed again.

 

And so they said their farewell to Hyde Park, another piece of their goodbye to London weaved beautifully into the thread of goodbyes they had already said.

 

They went back to their hotel suite, that they had under their name for one more night. She told him to dress up, and she did the same. He followed instructions without asking any questions, for it was true that he trusted her implicitly and that he always would, even if some might think it was against his better judgement.

 

She wore a beautiful gown in a soft, creamy colour with details in gold here and there. He found her more and more exquisite with each passing day, and he didn’t wonder if that’d ever cease because he knew that it wouldn’t. He would always want her more the more of her he had. She made him hungrier the more she satisfied him.

 

Arm in arm they stepped outside. She had arranged for a car to be already waiting for them, so she wouldn’t have to give a cabbie their destination, thus giving away the surprise before it was time.

 

“The Globe Theatre,” he said in awe of the round building when the car pulled over at the front.

 

They had walked past it before, of course, Jack being very fond of Shakespeare’s work, but they had not been able to see a play there yet. Phryne knew he’d love to, and she didn’t want them to leave London without experiencing that together.

 

“Do you want to see a play with me, Jack?” Phryne asked, taking his hand in one of hers.

 

“Of course, Miss Fisher,” came his reply.

 

“Do you have any guess as to which play we will be seeing, Inspector?”

 

He looked at her, the way in which she had carefully done her make-up, the colour and style of the dress she had chosen… How could he not see it before? How could he not figure it out before, what this night would be all about? She was a modern day Egyptian goddess, as close to the Queen of the Nile as any woman in the whole world would ever come to be. His modern day Egyptian goddess. His combative, reckless, outspoken, brave Cleopatra. The metaphorical downfall of his empire, and at the same time the only thing in his life that he was sure he’d never regret.

 

“We’re seeing _Antony and Cleopatra_ , Inspector,” she informed him, seeing how he had been rendered speechless by her surprise. “Shall we go in?”

 

The play was perfect. Every act, every scene, every line and its delivery. Seeing it with her by his side. Everything about the evening was perfect, more so than he could have ever expected or imagined it anything to be. But then again, Phryne was also like that: always better, and more wonderful, than anyone he had ever met, always surprising him with new things and letting him discover things about her that he would have never come close to imagining or dreaming about.

 

“Thank you, love,” he kissed her on the cheek when they were in the cab, on their way to the Ritz.

 

“You’re welcome,” she said, kissing his mouth softly. “My love, you’re so very welcome.”

 

They had kissed inside a cab before, on New Year’s Eve. They had been a little bit drunk, and tipsy, and they had laughed and teased each other all the ride. These kisses were different, though. They weren’t meant to kiss. They were a promise for more, of course- they both knew they’d make love that night. There was no other possible ending for the perfect day they’d had. But these kisses were softer, and sweeter. They promised so much more than a passionate night in a foreign city. They were a language on their own, and they spoke of things that lasted in time- like friendship, and trust, and love.

 

“And so Antony and Cleopatra have their gaudy night, at last,” she says once they were in bed.

 

He was propped up against the headboard and she was straddling him, their clothes forgotten on the floor. Jack traced her naked form with his fingertips: her ribcage, the side of her breasts, her back, her flat stomach.

 

“I think Antony and Cleopatra have had many gaudy nights already, don’t you Miss Fisher?” he asked, his thumbs drawing circles in the inside of her tights, getting closer but not quite to where she wanted him to put pressure.

 

She was soaked already, and he could feel it, warmth and slick, in his stomach. A few brushes of his thumb in the right places and she’d come, he knew. He always made her come two or three times before he finished himself. He literally worshipped her every time they were intimate, his adoration loud and clear in every movement, every sound.

 

“I said Antony and Cleopatra, not Phryne and Jack,” she clarified.

 

“Are you proposing a little bit of roleplaying, Miss Fisher?” He moved a little under her so her sex and his would align.

 

“Hasn’t the play gotten you in the mood, Inspector?” She impaled herself on him slowly, taking almost all of him in and then withdrawing at the last second.

 

“You devious tease,” he accused her, a frustrated smile on his face. But then his lips opened and he let out a moan when she started to move on him, with him finally inside.

 

“You’re more beautiful than the queen of the Nile could have ever hoped being, Phryne,” he told her. “Both in reality and in Shakespeare’s work of fiction.”

 

They settled into a rhythm and the only sound that could be heard were their gasps for air and moans that came with every thrust and wave of pleasure. The sensation was familiar as it was new, odd and contradictory as was everything that had to do with love.

 

She fell on top of his chest and he gathered her in his arms when they were spent. Jack ran his hands all over her back, caressing the soft, heated skin as nuzzled his chest, his shoulder, the crook of his neck. Their bodies were still joined as one when she lifted up her head to look him in the eye and ask:

 

“Tell me something about you I don’t know.”

 

“I’m mad about you.”

 

She laughed at the serious expression on his face.

 

“I already know that, you funny thing,” came her reply. And then repeated the question: “Tell me something about you I don’t know.”

 

“I meant what I said,” he insisted, still very serious. “You make me drunk with madness.”

 

She kissed the tip of his nose.

 

“As do you, Inspector. But I already knew that. Tell me something about you I don’t know,” she asked for the third time.

 

“You’ve made London unforgettable for me, Phryne. The city where we made love for the first time. The city where we said ‘ _me too_ ’ for the first time,” they both smiled lovingly at this, at each other. “You’ve carved London into my heart.”

 

“Just London?” she teased him.

 

“And Madrid, too,” he said, although he knew very well that wasn’t the answer she was looking for.

 

“Just London and Madrid?”

 

“You carved your name into my heart, but that happened long before I came to England. Long before that morning in the airfield when you asked. You, Phryne Fisher, are carved all over into me.” He kissed her forehead, her nose, her cheeks, her lips. “Now tell me something about you I don’t know.”

 

“I can’t believe this whole romantic overture was real,” she confessed.

 

“But it was.”

 

“Yes, it was,” she said, resting her head on his chest so that his heartbeat could lull her to sleep like it had all those weeks ago, the first time they had shared a bed together on the day of his arrival. “It was real. It happened here,” she yawned softly. “It was real, and here, and ours.”

 

“Real, and here, and ours,” he quoted her words back to her and reached down a little to kiss the top of her head. “Real, and here, and ours.”

 

And then they closed their eyes and fell asleep in each other’s arms in the quiet city of London for the last time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is it. 
> 
> I want to thank you all for everything. Every comment, every 'kudos', every word of encouragement. Everything. It's been my pleasure to share this story with you, and I am forever thankful to every one of its readers. I only have words of gratitude and kindness for you all.
> 
> And to you, @MissingMissFisher, my wonderful friend and editor, thank you for your patience and encouragement, for your suggestions and ideas, the information about London, and for being one of the best people I've ever had the pleasure of considering a part of my life. You've helped me in more ways than one. 
> 
> We still have Jack's letters, and the third part of the 'Definition of Madness' series will be posted soon. I hope to find you all again, my beautiful readers, in another story, at another time, very soon.
> 
> Love,
> 
> Dai


End file.
